A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY 



A TREASURY OF WAR 
POETRY 



BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS 
OF THE WORLD WAR 
1914-1917 

FIRST SERIES 

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY 

GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE 
Professor of English in the University of Tennessee 




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COPYRIGHT, I917, BY GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE 
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"Hark! now the Drums beat up again, 
For all true Soldiers Gentlemen! " 

— Corporal John Brown, Grenadier Guards, 1854. 



" Life is no life to him that dares not die, 
And death no death to him that dares not live." 

— Sir Henry Newboli. 

" We saw not clearly nor understood, 
But, yielding ourselves to the master-hand, 
Each in his part as best he could, 
We played it through as the author planned." 

— Alan Seeger. 



CONTENTS 



L AMERICA 

Rudyard Kipling: The Choice $ 

Henry van Dyke: "Liberty Enlightening the World " 4 

Robert Bridges: To the United States of America . 5 

( Vachel Lindsay: Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 6 

Jeanne Robert Foster: The " William P. Frye " . 7 

H. ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

Florence T. Holt: England and America . . .11 
Lieutenant Charles Langbridge Morgan: To 

America 11 

Helen Gray Cone: A Chant of Love for England . 12 

Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley : At St. Paul's : 

April 20, 1917 14 

Rowland Thirlmere: Jimmy Doane 14 

Alfred No yes: Princeton, May, 1917 . . . .17 

IH. ENGLAND 

Sir Henry Newbolt: The Vigil 21 

Rudyard Kipling: "For Ail we Have and Are" . . 22 

John Galsworthy: England to Free Men ... 23 

Sm Owen Seaman: Pro P atria 24 

George Herbert Clarke : Lines Written in Surrey, 

1917 . 25 



X 



CONTENTS 



IV. FRANCE 

Cecil Chesterton: France 29 

Henry van Dyke: The Name of France .... 30 

Charlotte Holmes Crawford: Vive la France ! . . 31 

Theodosia Garrison: The Soul of Jeanne d'Arc . . 32 

Edgar Lee Masters: O Glorious France ... 35 

Herbert Jones: To France 37 

Florence Earle Coates: Place de la Concorde . . 38 

Canon and Major Frederick George Scott: To 

France 39 

Grace Ellery Channing: Qui Vive? .... 40 

V. BELGIUM 

Laurence Binyon: To the Belgians 45 

Edith Wharton: Belgium 46 

Eden Phillpotts: To Belgium 47 

Sir Owen Seaman: To Belgium in Exile .... 47 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton: The Wife of Flanders . 48 

VI. RUSSIA AND AMERICA 

John Galsworthy: Russia — America . . . .53 

Robert Underwood Johnson : To Russia New and 

Free 54 

VII. ITALY 

Clinton Scollard: Italy in Arms 59 

George Edward Woodberry: On the Italian Front, 

. MCMXVI 61 



CONTENTS 



xi 



VIII. AUSTRALIA 
Archibald T. Strong: Australia to England ... 65 

IX. CANADA 

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: Canada to England . . 69 
Wilfred Campbell: Langemarck at Ypres . . .69 
Will H. Ogilvie: Canadians 73 

X. LIEGE 

Stephen Phillips: The Kaiser and Belgium 
Dana Burnet: The Battle of Liege . 

XI. VERDUN 

Laurence Binyon : Men of Verdun . 
Eden Phillpotts: Verdun .... 
Patrick R. Chalmers: Guns of Verdun . 

XII. OXFORD 



Winifred M. Letts: The Spires of Oxford ... 89 

W. Snow: Oxford in War-Time 90 

Tertius van Dyke: Oxford Revisited in War-Time . 91 

XIII. REFLECTIONS 

George Edward Woodberrt : Sonnets Written in the 

Fall of 1914 95 

Sir Henry Newbolt: The War Films .... 93 

Alfred No yes: The Searchlights 99 

Percy MacKaye: Christmas: 1915 101 



. . 77 

. . 77 



. 83 
. 84 
. 85 



CONTENTS 



Thomas Hardy: " Men who March Away " . . .101 
John Drinkwater: We Willed it Not . . . .103 
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ronald Ross: The Death 



of Peace ..." 104 

Florence Earle Coates: In War-Time . . . 108 

Laurence Binyon: The Anvil 109 

Walter de la Mare: The Fool Rings his Bells . .110 

John Finley: The Road to Dieppe 112 

W. Macneile Dixon: To Fellow Travellers in Greece 115 
Austin Dobson: "When there is Peace" . . - . .116 
Alfred No yes: A Prayer in Time of War . . .117 

Thomas Hardy: Then and Now 118 

Barry Pain: The Kaiser and God 119 

Robert Grant: The Superman 121 

Everard Owen: Three Hills . . . . . .123 



XIV. INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 
John Freeman: The Return 127 

Grace Fallow Norton: The Mobilization in Brit- 
tany 127 

Sir Henry Newbolt: The Toy Band .... 130 
Sir Owen Seaman: Thomas of the Light Heart . .131 
Maurice Hewlett: In the Trenches . . . .132 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Guards Came Through 134 

William Dean Howells: The Passengers of a Re- 
tarded Submersible 136 

Laurence Binyon: Edith Cavell 138 

Herbert Kaufman: The Hell-Gate of Soissons . . 141 

George Herbert Clarke: The Virgin of Albert . 144 



CONTENTS 



xiii 



Wilfrid Wilson Gibson: Retreat 145 

Sir Henry Newbolt: A Letter from the Front . . 145 
Grace Hazard Conkxing: Rheims Cathedral — 1914 . 146 



XV. POETS MILITANT 

^X^.lan Seeger: I Have a Rendezvous with Death . .151 
Lieutenant Rupert Brooke: The Soldier . . . 152 

Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley: Expectans Ex- 

pectavi . . . . 152 

Lieutenant Herbert Asqutth: The Volunteer . . 153 
Captain Julian Grenfell: Into Battle .... 154 
James Xorman Hall: The Cricketers of Flanders . 155 

Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley: "All the Hills 

and Vales Along " 157 

Captain James H. Knight-Adkin : No Man's Land . 158 

Alan Seeger: Champagne, 1914-15 160 

Captain Gilbert Frankau: Headquarters . . . 162 

Lieutenant E. Wyndham Tennant : Home Thoughts 

from Laventie 164 

Lieutenant Robert Ernest Vernede -. A Petition . 166 

Robert Nichols: Fulfilment 166 

The Day's March 167 

Lieutenant Frederic Manning: The Sign . . .169 

The Trenches . . 170 
Lieutenant Henry William Hutchixson : Sonnets . 171 
Captain J. E. Stewart: The Messines Road . . 172 
Private A. N. Field: The Challenge of the Guns . 174 
Lieutenant Geoffrey Howard : The Beach Road by 

the Wood 174 



xiv CONTENTS 



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Live" 


176 


Lieutexaxt W. X. Hodgson: Before Action 


178 


Lieutexaxt Dyxeley Hussey: Courage .... 


179 


Lieutexaxt A. Victor Ratcliffe : Optimism 


179 


ATatdh ^tdvft 0^w\td' The "Rnttlpfipld 


ISO 


Captaix James H. Kxight-Adkix : "On Les Aura! ' . 


lol 


Corporal Alexander Kobertsox : lo an Ola Lady 






1S2 


Lieutexaxt Gilbert TVaterhouse : The Casualty 






182 


Laxce-Corporal Malcolm Hemphrey : Hills of Home 


183 


XVI, AUXILIARIES 




Johx Fixley: The Red Cross Spirit Speaks . 


187 


YVixifred M. Letts: Chaplain to the Forces . 


188 


Edex Phillpotts: Song of the Red Cross 


189 


Laerexce Bixyox: The Healers ...... 


190 


Thomas L. Massox: The Red Cross Nurses . 


19-2 


XVII. KEEPING THE SEAS 






195 


Rudyard Kiplixg: The Mine-Sweepers . . . . 


196 


TTtt^VRV X" \ "V U)v"K"F ' 1 f H TP TlhpTMTT) 


197 


Lieutexaxt Paul Bewsher: The Dawn Patrol . 




Regixald McIxtosh Clevelaxd: Destroyers off 






199 


C. Fox Smith: British Merchant Service . 


200 



CONTENTS xv 



XVXII. THE WOUNDED 

Winifred M. Letts: To a Soldier in Hospital . . 205 
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson: Between the Lines . . 207 
Robert Haven Schauffler: The White Comrade . 212 

Robert W. Service: Fleurette 215 

Robert Frost: Not to Keep 219 

XIX. THE FALLEN 

Lieutenant Rupert Brooke: The Dead . . . 223 

John Masefield: The Island of Skyros .... 224 

Laurence Binyon: For the Fallen 225 

Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley: Two Sonnets . 226 

Walter de la Mare: "How Sleep the Brave! " . . 227 

Edward Verrall Lucas: The Debt 228 

Canon and Major Frederick George Scott: Requi- 

escant . 230 

Lieutenant Robert Ernest Vernede : To our Fallen 231 

Katharine Tynan: The Old Soldier . . . . . 232 

Robert Bridges: Lord Kitchener . . . . . 232 

John Helston: Kitchener 233 

Lieutenant Herbert Asquith: The Fallen Subaltern 234 

F. W. Bourdillon: The Debt Unpayable . . . 23£ 
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson: The Messages . . .236 

G. Rostrevor Hamilton: A Cross in Flanders . . 237 

Hermann Hagedorn: Resurrection 238 

Oscar C. A. Child: To a Hero 239 

Moray Dalton: Rupert Brooke (In Memoriam) . . 239 



xvi CONTENTS 

Francis Bickley: The Players 240 

Charles Alexander Richmond: A Song . . . 240 

XX. WOMEN AND THE WAR 

Josephine Preston Peabody: Harvest Moon . . 243 

Harvest Moon: 1916 . 244 

Ada Tyrrell: My Son 245 

Katharine Tynan : To the Others 246 

Grace Fallow Norton: The Journey .... 247 
Margaret Peterson: A Mother's Dedication -. . 249 

Eden Phillpotts: To a Mother 250 

Sara Teasdale: Spring in War-Time .... 250 

OCCASIONAL NOTES 253 

INDEXES 263 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



The Editor desires to express his cordial apprecia* 
tion of the assistance rendered him in his undertaking 
by the officials of the British Museum (Mr. F. D. 
Sladen, in particular) ; Professor W. Macneile Dixon, 
of the University of Glasgow; Professor Kemp Smith, 
of Princeton University; Miss Esther C. Johnson, of 
Needham, Massachusetts; and Mr. Francis Bickley, 
of London. He wishes also to acknowledge the cour- 
tesies generously extended by the following authors, 
periodicals, and publishers in granting permission for 
the use of the poems indicated, rights in which are in 
each case reserved by the owner of the copyright : — 

Mr. Francis Bickley and the Westminster Gazette : — 
"The Players." 

Mr. R W. Bourdillon and the Spectator: — "The 
Debt Unpayable." 

Dr. Robert Bridges and the London Times : — 
"Lord Kitchener," and "To the United States of 
America." 

Mr. Dana Burnet and the New York Evening Sun : — 
"The Battle of Liege." 

Mr. Wilfred Campbell and the Ottawa Evening 
Journal: — "Langemarck at Ypres." 

Mr. Patrick R. Chalmers and Punch: — "Guns of 
Verdun." 

Mr. Cecil Chesterton and The New Wityiess: — 
"France." 

Mr. Oscar C. A. Child and Harper s Magazine: — ■ 
"To a Hero." 

Mr. Reginald Mcintosh Cleveland and the New 
York Times: — "Destroyers off Jutland." 



xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



Miss Charlotte Holmes Crawford and Scribner's 
Magazine: — "Vive la France!" 

Mr. Moray Dalton and the Spectator: — " Rupert 

Brooke." 

Lord Besborough and the London Times: — "Into 
Battle," by the late Captain Julian Grenfell. 

Professor W. Maeneile Dixon and the London 
Times: — " To Fellow Travellers in Greece." 

Mr. Austin Dobson and the Spectator : — "'When 
There Is Peace.'" 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the London Times : — 
"The Guards Came Through." 

Mr. John Finiey and the Atlantic Vanillin : — " The 
Road to Dieppe": Mr. Finiey. the American Red 
Cross, and the Red Cross Magazine : — " The Red Cross 
Spirit Speaks." 

Mr. John Freeman and the Westminster Gazette: — 
" The Return." 

Mr. Robert Frost and the Yale Review : — " Not to 
Keep." 

Mr. John Galsworthy and the Westminster Gazette : — ■ 
"England to Free Men"; Mr. Galsworthy and the 
London Chronicle : — "Russia — America." 

Mrs. Theodosia Garrison and Scribner's Magazine: 
— "The Soul of Jeanne d'Arc." 

Lady Glenconner and the London Times : — "Home 
Thoughts from Laventie," by the late Lieutenant E. 
Wyndham Tennant. 

Mr. Robert Grant and the Nation (New York) : — 
"The Superman." 

Mr. Hermann Hagedorn and the Century Maga- 
zine : — " Resurrection." 

Mr. James Norman Hall and the Spectator : — "The 
Cricketers of Flanders." 

Mr. Thomas Hardy and the London Times: — 
"Men Who March Away," and "Then and Now." 

Mr. John Helston and the English Review: — 
"Kitchener." 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



xix 



Mr. Maurice Hewlett: — "In the Trenches," from 
Sing-Songs of the War (The Poetry Bookshop). 

Dr. A. E. Hillard:— "The Dawn Patrol," by 
Lieutenant Paul Bewsher. 

Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson: — 6 ' To the Oth- 
ers" and 4 4 The Old Soldier." 

Mrs. Florence T. Holt and the Atlantic Monthly : — 
"England and America." 

Mr. William Dean Howells and the North American 
Review: — "The Passengers of a Retarded Sub- 
mersible." 

Lady Hutchinson: — "Sonnets," by the late Lieu- 
tenant Henry William Hutchinson. 

Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson: — "To Russia 
New and Free," from Poems of War and Peace, pub- 
lished by the author. 

Mr.Rudyard Kipling: — - "The Choice"; "'For All 
we Have and Are'"; and "The Mine-Sweepers." 
(Copyright, 1914, 1915, 1917, by Rudyard Kipling.) 

Captain James H. Knigkt-Adidn and the Spectator; 
— "No Man's Land" and "On Les Aura!" 

Sergeant Joseph Lee and the Spectator : — " German 
Prisoners." 

Mr. E. V. Lucas and the Sphere : — "The Debt." 

Mr. Walter de la Mare and the London Times : — ■ 
"'How Sleep the Brave!'"; Mr. de la Mare and 
the Westminster Gazette: — "The Fool Rings his 
Bells." 

Mr. Edward Marsh, literary executor of the late 
Rupert Brooke: — "The Soldier" and "The Dead." 

Mr. Thomas L. Masson: — "The Red Cross 
Nurses," from the Red Cross Magazine. 

Lieutenant Charles Langbridge Morgan and the 
Westminster Gazette: — "To America." 

Sir Henry Newbolt : — " The Vigil"; "The War 
Films"; "The Toy Band," and "A Letter from the 
Front." 



xx ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



Mr. Alfred Noyes: — "Princeton, May, 1917"; 
"The Searchlights" (London Times), "A Prayer in 
Time of War " (London Daily Mail), and " Kilmeny." 

Mr. WillH.Ogilvie and Country Life:— "Canadians/* 

Mr. Barry Pain and the London Times: — "The 
Kaiser and God." 

Miss Marjorie Pickthall and the London Times : — 
"Canada to England." 

Canon H. D. Rawnsley and the Westminster Ga- 
zette : — "At St. Paul's, April 20, 1917." 

Dr. Charles Alexander Richmond: — "A Song." 

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ronald Ross and the Poetry 
Review : — "The Death of Peace." 

Mr. Robert Haven Schauffler : — " The White 
Comrade." 

Mr. W. Snow and the Spectator : — "Oxford in War- 
Time." 

Mrs. Grace Ellery Channing-Stetson and the New 
York Tribune : — 6 'Qui Vive ?" 

Mr. Rowland Thirlmere and the Poetry Review : — 
"Jimmy Doane." 

Mrs. Ada Tvrrell and the Saturday Review : — "My 
Son." 

Dr. Henry van Dyke and the London Times : — 
"Liberty Enlightening the World," and "Mare 
Liberum"; Dr. van Dyke and the Art World: "The 
Name of France." 

Mr, Tertius van Dyke and the Spectator : — " Oxford 
Revisited in War-Time. " 

Mrs. Edith Wharton: — "Belgium," from King 
Albert's Book (Hearst's International Library Com- 
pany). 

Mr. George Edward Woodberry and the Boston 
Herald: — "On the Italian Front, MCMXVI"; 
Mr. W T oodberry, the New York Times and the 
North American Review: — "Sonnets Written in the 
Fall of 1914." 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



The Athenaeum: — "A Cross in Flanders," by 
Go Rostrevor Hamilton. 

The Poetry Review: — "The Messines Road," by 
Captain J. E. Stewart; " — But a Short Time to 
Live," by the late Sergeant Leslie Coulson. 

The Spectator: — "The Challenge of the Guns," 
by Private A. N. Field. 

The Westminster Gazette : — "Lines Written in 
Surrey, 1917," by George Herbert Clarke. 

Messrs. Barse & Hopkins: — "Fleurette," by Rob- 
ert W. Service. 

The Cambridge University Press and Professor 
William R. Sorley: — "Expectans Expectavi"; '"All 
the Hills and Vales Along,'" and "Two Sonnets," by 
the late Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, from Marl- 
borough and Other Poems. 

Messrs. Chatto & Windus: — 4 ' Fulfilment " and 
" The Day's March," by Robert Nichols, from Ar- 
dours and Endurances. 

Messrs. Constable & Company: — "Pro Patria," 
"Thomas of the Light Heart," and "To Belgium 
in Exile," by Sir Owen Seaman, from War-Time ; 
"To France" and " Requiescant," by Canon and 
Major Frederick George Scott, from In the Battle 
Silences. 

Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company: — "To a Soldier 
in Hospital " (the Spectator) ; " Chaplain to the Forces " 
and "The Spires of Oxford" {Westminster Gazette), by 
Winifred M. Letts, from Hallowe'en, and Poems of the 
War; "A Chant of Love for England," by Helen 
Gray Cone, from A Chant of Love for England, and 
Other Poems (published also by J. M. Dent & Sons, 
Limited, London). 

Lawrence J. Gomme : — "Italy in Arms," by 
Clinton Scollard, from Italy in Arms, and Other 
Poems. 



xxii — ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



William Heinemann: — " To Our Fallen" and "A 
Petition " (the London Times), by the late Lieuten- 
ant Robert Ernest Vernede. 

Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company: — "To the 
Belgians"; "Men of Verdun"; "The Anvil"; "Edith 
Cavell"; "The Healers" and "For the Fallen," by 
Laurence Binyon, from The Cause (published also by 
Elkin Mathews, London, in The Anvil and The Win- 
nowing Fan); "Headquarters," by Captain Gilbert 
Frankau, from A Song of the Guns; "Place de la 
Concorde" and "In War-Time," by Florence Earle 
Coates, from The Collected Poems of Florence Earle 
Coates; "Harvest Moon" and "Harvest Moon, 1916," 
by Josephine Preston Peabody, from Harvest Moon; 
"The Mobilization in Brittany" and "The Journey," 
by Grace Fallow Norton, from Roads, and "Rheims 
Cathedral — 1914," by Grace Hazard Conkling, from 
Afternoons of April. 

John Lane: — "The Kaiser and Belgium," by the 
late Stephen Phillips. 

The John Lane Company: — "The Wife of Flan- 
ders," by Gilbert K. Chesterton, from Poems (pub- 
lished also by Messrs. Burns and Gates, London) ; "The 
Soldier," and "The Dead," by the late Lieutenant 
Rupert Brooke, from The Collected Poems of Rupert 
Brooke (published also by Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson, 
London, in 19 H, and Other Poems). 

Erskine Macdonald : — The following poems from 
Soldier Poets: — "The Beach Road by the Wood," by 
Lieutenant Geoffrey Howard; "Before Action," by 
the late Lieutenant W. N. Hodgson ("Edward Mel- 
bourne") ; "Courage," by Lieutenant DyneleyHussey; 
"Optimism," by Lieutenant A. Victor Ratcliffe; "The 
Battlefield," by Major Sidney Oswald; "To an Old 
Lady Seen at a Guest-House for Soldiers," by Cor- 
poral Alexander Robertson; "The Casualty Clearing 
Station," by Lieutenant Gilbert Waterhouse; and 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



xxiii 



"Hills of Home," by Lance-Corporal Malcolm Hem- 
phrey. 

The Macmillan Company: — "To Belgium"; "Ver- 
dun"; "To a Mother," and "Song of the Red Cross," 
by Eden Phillpotts, from Plain Song, 19U-1916 (pub- 
lished also by William Heinemann, London); "The Is- 
land of Skyros," by John Masefield; "Abraham Lincoln 
Walks at Midnight," from The Congo and Other Poems, 
by Vachel Lindsay; "O Glorious France," by Edgar 
Lee Masters, from Songs and Satires; "Christmas, 
1915," from Poems and Plays, by Percy MacKaye; 
1 ' The Hellgate of Soissons, ' ' by Herbert Kaufman, from 
The Hellgate of Soissons ; "Spring in War-Time," by 
Sara Teasdale, from Rivers to the Sea; and "Retreat," 
"The Messages," and "Between the Lines," by Wil- 
frid Wilson Gibson. 

Messrs. Macmillan & Company: — "Australia to 
England," by Archibald T. Strong, from Sonnets 
of the Empire, and "Men Who March Away," by 
Thomas Hardy, from Satires of Circumstance. 

Elkin Mathews: — "British Merchant Service" 
(the Spectator) , by C. Fox Smith, from The Natal 
Crown. 

John Murray: — "The Sign," and "The Trenches/' 
by Lieutenant Frederic Manning. 

The Princeton University Press: — "To France," 
by Herbert Jones, from A Booh of Princeton Verse. 

Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons: — "I Have a 
Rendezvous with Death," and "Champagne, 1914- 
1915," by the late Alan Seeger, from Poems. 

Messrs. Sherman, French & Company: — "The 
William P. Fry e " (New York Times), by Jeanne 
Robert Foster, from Wild Apples. 

Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson: — "We Willed It 
Not" (The Sphere), by John Drinkwater; "Three 
Hills" (London Times), by Everard Owen, from 
Three Hills, and Other Poemj; "The Volunteer," and 



xxiv 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



"The Fallen Subaltern, " by Lieutenant Herbert As- 
quith, from The Volunteer, and Other Poems. 

Messrs. Truslove and Hanson: — "A Mother's 
Dedication," by Margaret Peterson, from The Wo- 

men's Message, 



INTRODUCTION 



Because man is both militant and pacific, he has 
expressed in literature, as indeed in the other forms of 
art, his pacific and militant moods. Nor are these 
moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may become 
the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevit- 
ably to bring about war. Of the dully unresponsive 
pacificist and the jingo patriot, quick to anger, the 
latter no doubt is the more dangerous to the cause of 
true freedom, yet both are " undesirable citizens." He 
who believes that peace is illusory and spurious, unless 
it be based upon justice and liberty, will be proud to 
battle, if battle he must, for the sake of those foun- 
dations. 

For the most part, the poetry of war, undertaken 
in this spirit, has touched and exalted such special 
qualities as patriotism, courage, self-sacrifice, enter- 
prise, and endurance. Where it has tended to glorify 
war in itself, it is chiefly because war has released those 
qualities, so to speak, in stirring and spectacular ways; 
and where it has chosen to round upon war and to 
upbraid it, it is because war has slain ardent and lov- 
able youths and has brought misery and despair to 
women and old people. But the war poet has left the 
mere arguments to others. For himself, he has seen 
and felt. Envisaging war from various angles, now 
romantically, now realistically, now as the celebrating 
chronicler, now as the contemplative interpreter, but 
always in a spirit of catholic curiosity, he has sung the 



INTRODUCTION 



fall of Troy, the Roman adventures, the mediaeval bat- 
tles and crusades, the fields of Agincourt and Water- 
loo, and the more modern revolutions. Since Homer, 
he has spoken with martial eloquence through the 
voices of Drayton, Spenser, Marlowe, Webster, Shake- 
speare, Milton, Byron, Scott, Burns, Campbell, Tenny- 
son, Browning, the New England group, and Walt 
Whitman, — to mention only a few of the British and 
American names, — and he speaks sincerely and power- 
fully to-day in the writings of Kipling, Hardy, Mase- 
field, Binyon, Newbolt, Watson, Rupert Brooke, and 
the two young soldiers — the one English, the other 
American — who have lately lost their lives while on 
active service: Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley, who 
was killed at Hulluch, October 18, 1915; and Alan See- 
ger, who fell, mortally wounded, during the charge on 
Belloy-en-Santerre, July 4, 1916. 

There can be little doubt that these several minds 
and spirits, stirred by the passion and energy of war, 
and reacting sensitively both to its cruelties and to its 
pities, have experienced the kinship of quickened in- 
sight and finer unselfishness in the face of wide-ranging 
death. They have silently compared, perhaps, the 
normal materialistic conventions in business, politics, 
education, and religion, with the relief from those con- 
ventions that nearly all soldiers and many civilians ex- 
perience in time of war; for although war has its too 
gross and ugly side, it has not dared to learn that in- 
flexibility of custom and conduct that deadens the 
spirit into a tame submission. This strange rebound 
and exaltation would seem to be due less to the physical 
realities of war — which must in many ways cramp and 
constrain the individual — than to the relative spirit- 



INTRODUCTION 



xxvii 



ual freedom engendered by the needs of war, if they 
are to be successfully met. The man of war has an 
altogether unusual opportunity to realize himself, to 
cleanse and heal himself through the mastering of his 
physical fears; through the facing of his moral doubts; 
through the reexamination of whatever thoughts he 
may have possessed, theretofore, about life and death 
and the universe ; and through the quietly unselfish 
devotion he owes to the welfare of his fellows and to 
the cause of his native land. 

Into the stuff of his thought and utterance, whether 
he be on active service or not, the poet-interpreter of 
war weaves these intentions, and cooperates with his 
fellows in building up a little higher and better, from 
time to time, that edifice of truth for whose com- 
pletion can be spared no human experience, no human 
hope. 

As already suggested, English and American liter- 
atures have both received genuine accessions, even 
thus early, arising out of the present great conflict, 
and we may be sure that other equally notable con- 
tributions will be made. The present Anthology con- 
tains a number of representative poems produced by 
English-speaking men and women. The editorial 
policy has been humanly hospitable, rather than aca- 
demically critical, especially in the case of some of the 
verses written by soldiers at the Front, which, how- 
ever slight in certain instances their technical merit 
may be, are yet psychologically interesting as sin- 
cere transcripts of personal experience, and will, it is 
thought, for that very reason, peculiarly attract and in- 
terest the reader. It goes without saying that there are 
several poems in this group which conspicuously sue- 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 



ceed also as works of art. For the rest, the attempt has 
been made, within such limitations as have been ex- 
perienced, to present pretty freely the best of what has 
been found available in contemporary British and 
American war verse. It must speak for itself, and the 
reader will find that in not a few instances it does so 
with sensitive sympathy and with living power; some- 
times, too, with that quietly intimate companionable- 
ness which we find in Gray's Elegy, and which John 
Masefleld, while lecturing in America in 1916, so often 
indicated as a prime quality in English poetry. But 
if this quality appears in Chaucer and the pre-Koman- 
tics and Wordsworth, it appears also in Longfellow 
and Lowell, in Emerson and Lanier, and in William 
Vaughn Moody; for American poetry is, after all, as 
English poetry, — ■ "with a difference," — sprung from 
the same sources, and coursing along similar channels. 

The new fellowship of the two great Anglo-Saxon 
nations which a book of this character may, to a de- 
gree, illustrate, is filled with such high promise for both 
of them, and for all civilization, that it is perhaps 
hardly too much to say, with Ambassador Walter H. 
Page, in his address at the Pilgrims' Dinner in London, 
April 12, 1917: "We shall get out of this association 
an indissoluble companionship, and we shall hence- 
forth have indissoluble mutual duties for mankind. 
I doubt if there could be another international event 
comparable in large value and in long consequences to 
this closer association." Mr. Balfour struck the same 
note when, daring his mission to the Lnited States, 
he expressed himself in these words: "That this great 
people should throw themselves whole-heartedly into 
this mighty struggle, prepared for all efforts and sac- 



INTRODUCTION 



xxix 



rifices that may be required to win success for this 
most righteous cause, is an event at once so happy 
and so momentous that only the historian of the future 
will be able, as I believe, to measure its true propor- 
tions." 

The words of these eminent men ratify in the field 
of international politics the hopeful anticipation which 
Tennyson expressed in his poem, Hands all Round, 
as it appeared in the London Examiner, February 7, 
1852:— 

" Gigantic daughter of the West, 

We drink to thee across the flood, 
We know thee most, we love thee best, 

For art thou not of British blood? 
Should war's mad blast again be blown, 

Permit not thou the tyrant powers 
To fight thy mother here alone, 

But let thy broadsides roar with ours. 
Hands all round! 

God the tyrant's cause confound! 
To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends, 

And the great name of England, round and round. 

M O rise, our strong Atlantic sons, 

When war against our freedom springs! 
O speak to Europe through your guns! 

They can be understood by kings. 
You must not mix our Queen with those 

That wish to keep their people fools; 
Our freedom's foemen are her foes, 

She comprehends the race she rules. 
Hands all round! 

God the tyrant's cause confound! 
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends, 

And the great cause of Freedom, round and round." 



XXX 



INTRODUCTION 



They ratify also the spirit of those poems in the pres- 
ent volume which seek to interpret to Britons and 
Americans their deepening friendship. " Poets," 
said Shelley, " are the unacknowledged legislators of 
the world," and he meant by legislation the guidance 
and determination of the verdicts of the human souL 

G. H. C. 

August, 1917 



AMERICA 



THE CHOICE 

The American Spirit speaks : 
To the Judge of Right and Wrong 

With Whom fulfillment lies 
Our purpose and our power belong, 

Our faith and sacrifice. 

Let Freedom's land rejoice! 

Our ancient bonds are riven; 
Once more to us the eternal choice 

Of good or ill is given. 

Not at a little cost, 

Hardly by prayer or tears, 
Shall we recover the road we lost 

In the drugged and doubting years. 

But after the fires and the wrath, 

But after searching and pain, 
His Mercy opens us a path 

To live with ourselves again. 

In the Gates of Death rejoice! 

We see and hold the good — 
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice 

For Freedom's brotherhood. 

Then praise the Lord Most High 

Whose Strength hath saved us whole, 

W r ho bade us choose that the Flesh should die 
And not the living Soul ! 

Rudyard Kipling 



4 



AMERICA 



"LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD" 

Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan 
Bay, 

The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean 
away : 

Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high 
thy hand 

To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every 
land. 

No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for 

thee, 

While friends are righting for thy cause beyond the 
guardian sea : 

The battle that they wage is thine; thou fallest if they 
fall; 

The swollen flood of Prussian pride will sweep un- 
checked o'er all. 

O cruel is the conquer-lust in Hohenzollern brains: 
The paths they plot to gain their goal are dark with 

shameful stains: 
No faith they keep, no law revere, no god but naked 

Might; — 

They are the foemen of mankind. Up, Liberty, and 
smite ! 

Britain, and France, and Italy, and Russia newly born, 
Have waited for thee in the night. Oh, come as comes 
the morn. 

Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise, 
With steady hope and mighty help to join thy brave 

Allies. 



UNITED STATES 5 



O dearest country of my heart, home of the high de- 
sire, 

Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom's altar- 
fire: 

For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the war- 
lords cease, 

And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and 
peace. 

Henry van Dyke 

April 10, 1917 

TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began 
To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day 
When first they challenged freemen to the fray, 

And with the Briton dared the American. 

Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man; 
Labour and Justice now shall have their way, 
And in a League of Peace — God grant we may — - 

Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan. 

Sure is our hope since he who led your nation 

Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe 
Of that high call to work the world's salvation; 

Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness 
In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law, 

Freedom and Honour and sweet Lovingkindness. 

Robert Bridges 

April SO, 1917 



6 AMERICA 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT 
MIDNIGHT 

(IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS) 

It is portentous, and a thing of state 
That here at midnight, in our little town, 
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, 
Near the old court-house pacing up and down. 

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards 
He lingers where his children used to play; 
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones 
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away. 

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, 
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl 
Make him the quaint great figure that men love, 
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all. 

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. 

He is among us : — as in times before ! 

And we who toss and lie awake for long 

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. 

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. 
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? 
Too many peasants fight, they know not why, 
Too many homesteads in black terror weep. 

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. 
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. 
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now 
The bitterness, the folly, and the pain. 



THE WILLIAM P. FRYE 7 



He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn 
Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe free: 
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth 
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp, and Sea. 

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, 
That all his hours of travail here for men 
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace 
That he may sleep upon his hill again? 

Vachel Lindsay 

THE "WILLIAM P. FRYE" 

I saw her first abreast the Boston Light 
At anchor; she had just come in, turned head, 
And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down. 
I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed 
The cable out from her careening bow, 
I moved up on the swell, shut steam and lay 
Hove to in my old launch to look at her. 
She'd come in light, a-skimming up the Bay 
Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full; 
And all her noble lines from bow to stern 
Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode 
The morning air like those thin clouds that turn 
Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds 
From calm sea-courses. 

There, in smoke-smudged coats, 
Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, 
Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats, 
Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot 
To see the Frye come lording on her way 

i 



8 



AMERICA 



Like some old queen that we had half forgot 

Come to her own. A little up the Bay 

The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then; 

The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom 

Of the New England coast that tardily 

Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb. 

The State-house glittered on old Beacon Hill, 

Gold in the sun. . . . 'T was all so fair awhile; 

But she was fairest — this great square-rigged ship 

That had blown in from some far happy isle 

On from the shores of the Hesperides. 

They caught her in a South Atlantic road 
Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with 
wheat; 

"Wheat's contrabrand," they said, and blew her hull 

To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet, 

Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships 

That carry trade for us on the high sea 

And warped out of each harbor in the States. 

It was n't law, so it seems strange to me — 

A big mistake. Her keel's struck bottom now 

And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep 

To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root 

On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep 

Through the set sails; but never, never more 

Her crew will stand away to brace and trim, 

Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up 

To windward on the Gulf Stream's stormy rim; 

Never again she'll head a no'theast gale 

Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb, 

And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light, 

To make the harbor glad because she's come. 

Jeanne Robert Foster 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



Mother and child ! Though the dividing sea 
Shall roll its tide between us, we are one, 
Knit by immortal memories, and none 

But feels the throb of ancient fealty. 

A century has passed since at thy knee 

We learnt the speech of freemen, caught the fire 
That would not brook thy menaces, when sire 

And grandsire hurled injustice back to thee. 

But the full years have wrought equality : 
The past outworn, shall not the future bring 
A deeper union, from whose life shall spring 
Mankind's best hope? In the dark night of strife 
Men perished for their dream of Liberty 
Whose lives were given for this larger life. 

Florence T. Holt 

TO AMERICA 

Whex the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent 
Close wings about the room, and winter stands 
Hard-eyed before the window, when the hands 
Have turned the book's last page and friends are 
sleeping, 

Thought, as it were an old stringed instrument 
Drawn to remembered music, oft does set 
The lips moving in prayer, for us fresh keeping 
Knowledge of springtime and the violet. 



12 ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



And, as the eyes grow dim with many years, 
The spirit runs more swiftly than the feet, 
Perceives its comfort, knows that it will meet 
God at the end of troubles, that the dreary 
Last reaches of old age lead beyond tears 
To happy youth unending. There is peace 
In homeward waters, where at last the weary 
Shall find rebirth, and their long struggle cease. 

So, at this hour, when the Old World lies sick, 
Beyond the pain, the agony of breath 
Hard drawn, beyond the menaces of death, 
O'er graves and years leans out the eager spirit. 
First must the ancient die; then shall be quick 
New fires within us. Brother, we shall make 
Incredible discoveries and inherit 
The fruits of hope, and love shall be awake. 

Charles Langbridge Morgan 

A CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND 

A song of hate is a song of Hell; 
Some there be that sing it well. 
Let them sing it loud and long, 
We lift our hearts in a loftier song: 
We lift our hearts to Heaven above, 
Singing the glory of her we love, — 
England ! 

Glory of thought and glory of deed, 
Glory of Hampden and Runnymede; 
Glory of ships that sought far goals, 
Glory of swords and glory of souls! 



CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND U 



Glory of songs mounting as birds, 
Glory immortal of magical words; 
Glory of Milton, glory of Nelson, 
Tragical glory of Gordon and Scott; 
Glory of Shelley, glory of Sidney, 
Glory transcendent that perishes not, — 
Hers is the story, hers be the glory, 
England ! 

Shatter her beauteous breast ye may; 
The spirit of England none can slay! 
Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul's — 
Deem ye the fame of the Admiral falls? 
Pry the stone from the chancel floor, — 
Dream ye that Shakespeare shall live no more? 
Where is the giant shot that kills 
Wordsworth walking the old green hills? 
Trample the red rose on the ground, — 
Keats is Beauty while earth spins round! 
Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire, 
Cast her ashes into the sea, — 
She shall escape, she shall aspire, 
She shall arise to make men free : 
She shall arise in a sacred scorn, 
Lighting the lives that are yet unborn; 
Spirit supernal, Splendour eternal, 
ENGLAND! 

Helen Gray Cone 



14 ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



AT ST. PAUL'S 
April 20, 1917 

Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's 
prayer 

Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven 

At such uprush of intercession given, 
Here where to-day one soul two nations share, 
And with accord send up thro' trembling air 

Their vows to strive as Honour ne'er has striven 

Till back to hell the Lords of hell are driven, 
And Life and Peace again shall flourish fair. 

This is the day of conscience high-enthroned, 
The day when East is West and West is East 
To strike for human Love and Freedom's word 
Against foul wrong that cannot be atoned; 

To-day is hope of brotherhood's bond increased, 
And Christ, not Odin, is acclaimed the Lord. 

Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley 

JIMMY DOANE 

Often I think of you, Jimmy Doane, — 
You who, light-heartedly, came to my house 
Three autumns, to shoot and to eat a grouse! 

As I sat apart in this quiet room, 
My mind was full of the horror of war 
And not with the hope of a visitor. 

I had dined on food that had lost its taste; 

My soul was cold and I wished you were here, — 1 

When, all in a moment, I knew you were near. 



JIMMY DOANE 



15 



Placing that chair where you used to sit, 

I looked at my book : — Three years to-day 

Since you laughed in that seat and I heard you say — 

"My country is with you, whatever befall: 
America — Britain — these two are akin 
In courage and honour; they underpin 

"The rights of Mankind!" Then you grasped my 
hand 

With a brotherly grip, and you made me feel 
Something that Time would surely reveal. 

You were comely and tall; you had corded arms, 
And sympathy's grace with your strength was blent; 
You were generous, clever, and confident. 

There was that in your hopes which uncountable 
lives 

Have perished to make; your heart was fulfilled 
With the breath of God that can never be stilled. 

A living symbol of power, you talked 
Of the work to do in the world to make 
Life beautiful: yes, and my heartstrings ache 

To think how you, at the stroke of War, 
Chose that your steadfast soul should fly 
With the eagles of France as their proud ally. 

You were America's self, dear lad — ■ 

The first swift son of your bright, free land 

To heed the call of the Inner Command — ■ 



16 ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



To image its spirit in such rare deeds 

As braced the valour of France, who knows 

That the heart of America thrills with her woes. 

For a little leaven leavens the whole! 
Mostly we find, when we trouble to seek 
The soul of a people, that some unique, 

Brave man is its flower and symbol, who 
Makes bold to utter the words that choke 
The throats of feebler, timider folk. 

You flew for the western eagle — and fell 
Doing great things for your country's pride: 
For the beauty and peace of life you died. 

Britain and France have shrined in their souls 
Your memory; yes, and for ever you share 
Their love with their perished lords of the air. 

Invisible now, in that empty seat, 

You sit, who came through the clouds to me, 

Swift as a message from over the sea. 

My house is always open to you: 

Dear spirit, come often and you will find 

'Welcome, where mind can foregather with mind'; 

And may we sit together one day 
Quietly here, when a word is said 
To bring new gladness unto our dead, 

Knowing your dream is a dream no more; 
And seeing on some momentous pact 
Your vision upbuilt as a deathless fact. 

Rowland Thirlmere 



PRINCETON, MAY, 1917 17 



PRINCETON, MAY, 1917 

Here Freedom stood by slaughtered friend and foe, 
And, ere the wrath paled or that sunset died, 

Looked through the ages; then, with eyes aglow, 
Laid them to wait that future, side by side. 

(Lines for a monument to the American and British soldiers 
of the Revolutionary War who fell on the Princeton 
battlefield and were buried in one grave.) 



Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine 

Through dogwood, red and white; 
And round the gray quadrangles, line by line, 

The windows fill with light, 
Where Princeton calls to Magdalen, tower to tower, 

Twin lanthorns of the law; 
And those cream- white magnolia boughs embower 

The halls of "Old Nassau." 



The dark bronze tigers crouch on either side 

Where redcoats used to pass; 
And round the bird-loved house where Mercer died. 

And violets dusk the grass, 
By Stony Brook that ran so red of old, 

But sings of friendship now, 
To feed the old enemy's harvest fifty-fold 

The green earth takes the plow. 



Through this May night, if one great ghost should 
stray 

With deep remembering eyes, 
Where that old meadow of battle smiles away 
Its blood-stained memories, 



18 ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



If Washington should walk, where friend and foe 

Sleep and forget the past, 
Be sure his unquenched heart would leap to know 

Their souls are linked at last. 

Be sure he walks, in shadowy buff and blue, 

Where those dim lilacs wave. 
He bends his head to bless, as dreams come true, 

The promise of that grave; 
Then, with a vaster hope than thought can scan, 

Touching his ancient sword, 
Prays for that mightier realm of God in man : 

" Hasten thy kingdom, Lord. 

"Land of our hope, land of the singing stars, 

Type of the world to be, 
The vision of a world set free from wars 

Takes life, takes form from thee; 
Where all the jarring nations of this earth, 

Beneath the all-blessing sun, 
Bring the new music of mankind to birth, 

And make the whole world one." 

And those old comrades rise around him there, 

Old foemen, side by side, 
With eyes like stars upon the brave night air, 

And young as when they died, 
To hear your bells, O beautiful Princeton towers, 

Ring for the world's release. 
They see you piercing like gray swords through 
flowers, 

And smile, from souls at peace. 

Alfred Noyes 



ENGLAND 



THE VIGIL 



England! where the sacred flame 

Burns before the inmost shrine, 
Where the lips that love thy name 

Consecrate their hopes and thine, 
Where the banners of thy dead 
Weave their shadows overhead, 
Watch beside thine arms to-night, 
Pray that God defend the Right. 

Think that when to-morrow comes 

War shall claim command of all, 
Thou must hear the roll of drums, 

Thou must hear the trumpet's call. 
Now, before thy silence ruth, 
Commune with the voice of truth; 
England ! on thy knees to-night 
Pray that God defend the Right. 

Single-hearted, unafraid, 

Hither all thy heroes came, 
On this altar's steps were laid 

Gordon's life and Outram's fame. 
England! if thy will be yet 
By their great example set, 
Here beside thine arms to-night 
Pray that God defend the Right. 

So shalt thou when morning comes 
Rise to conquer or to fall, 



22 



ENGLAND 



Joyful hear the rolling drums, 

Joyful hear the trumpets call, 
Then let Memory tell thy heart : 
* ' England! what thou wert, thou art!" 
Gird thee with thine ancient might, 
Forth! and God defend the Right! 

Henry Newbclt 



"FOR ALL WE HAVE AND ARE" 

For all we have and are, 
For all our children's fate, 
Stand up and meet the war. 
The Hun is at the gate! 
Our world has passed away 
In wantonness o'erthrown. 
There is nothing left to-day 
But steel and fire and stone. 



Though all we knew depart, 
The old commandments stand: 
"In courage keep your heart, 
In strength lift up your hand." 



Once more we hear the word 
That sickened earth of old: 
"No law except the sword 
Unsheathed and uncontrolled," 
Once more it knits mankind, 
Once more the nations go 
To meet and break and bind 
A crazed and driven foe. 



ENGLAND TO FREE MEN 23 



Comfort, content, delight — 
The ages' slov/-bought gain — 
They shrivelled in a night, 
Only ourselves remain 
To face the naked days 
In silent fortitude, 
Through perils and dismays 
Renewed and re-renewed. 

Though all we made depart, 
The old commandments stand: 
"In patience keep your heart, 
In strength lift up your hand." 

No easy hopes or lies 

Shall bring us to our goal, 

But iron sacrifice 

Of body, will, and soul 

There is but one task for all — 

For each one life to give. 

Who stands if freedom fall? 

Who dies if England live? 

Rudyard Kipling 



ENGLAND TO FREE MEN 

Men of my blood, you English men! 
From misty hill and misty fen, 
From cot, and town, and plough, and moor, 
Come in — before I shut the door! 
Into my courtyard paved with stones 
That keep the names, that keep the bones, 
Of none but English men who came 
Free of their lives, to guard my fame. 



«4 



ENGLAND 



I am your native land who bred 

No driven heart, no driven head; 

I fly a flag in every sea 

Round the old Earth, of Liberty! 

I am the Land that boasts a crown; 

The sun comes up, the sun goes down — 

And never men may say of me, 

Mine is a breed that is not free. 

I have a wreath! My forehead wears 
A hundred leaves — a hundred years 
I never knew the words: "You must!" 
And shall my wreath return to dust? 
Freemen! The door is yet ajar; 
From northern star to southern star, 
O ye who count and ye who delve, 
Come in — before my clock strikes twelve ! 

John Galsworthy 



PRO PATRIA 

England, in this great fight to which you go 

Because, where Honour calls you, go you must, 
Be glad, whatever comes, at least to know 
You have your quarrel just. 

Peace was your care; before the nations' bar 

Her cause you pleaded and her ends you sought; 
But not for her sake, being what you are, 
Could you be bribed and bought. 

Others may spurn the pledge of land to land, 

May with the brute sword stain a gallant past; 
But by the seal to which you set your hand, 
Thank God, you still stand fast! 



LINES WRITTEN IN SURREY 25 



Forth, then, to front that peril of the deep 

With smiling lips and in your eyes the light, 
Steadfast and confident, of those who keep 
Their storied 'scutcheon bright. 

And we, whose burden is to watch and wait, — v 
High-hearted ever, strong in faith and prayer, — 
We ask what offering we may consecrate, 
What humble service share. 

To steel our souls against the lust of ease; 

To bear in silence though our hearts may bleed; 
To spend ourselves, and never count the cost, 
For others' greater need; — 

To go our quiet ways, subdued and sane; 

To hush all vulgar clamour of the street; 
With level calm to face alike the strain 
Of triumph or defeat; 

This be our part, for so we serve you best, 

So best confirm their prowess and their pride, 
Your warrior sons, to whom in this high test 
Our fortunes we confide. 

Owen Seaman 

August 12, 19H 

LINES WRITTEN IN SURREY, 1917 

A sudden swirl of song in the bright sky — 
The little lark adoring his lord the sun; 
Across the corn the lazy ripples run; 

Under the eaves, conferring drowsily, 



36 



ENGLAND 



Doves droop or amble; the agile waterfly 

Wrinkles the pool; and flowers, gay and dun„ 
Rose, bluebell, rhododendron, one by one, 

The buccaneering bees prove busily. 

Ah, who may trace this tranquil loveliness 
In verse felicitous? — no measure tells; 

But gazing on her bosom we can guess 

Why men strike hard for England in red hells, 

Falling on dreams, 'mid Death's extreme caress, 
Of English daisies dancing in English dells. 

George Herbert Clarke 



FRANCE 



FRANCE 



Because for once the sword broke in her hand, 
The words she spoke seemed perished for a space; 

All wrong was brazen, and in every land 
The tyrants walked abroad with naked face. 

The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star 

Of evil Fate denying all release. 
The rulers smote, the feeble crying "War!" 

The usurers robbed, the naked crying "Peace!" 

And her own feet were caught in nets of gold, 
And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm, 

And little men climbed her high seats and sold 
Her honour to the vulture and the worm. 

And she seemed broken and they thought her dead, 
The Overmen, so brave against the weak. 

Has your last word of sophistry been said, 
O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak. 

Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes, 
As slow mists parted over Valmy fell, 

As once again her hands in high surprise 
Take hold upon the battlements of Hell. 

Cecil Chesterton 



so 



FRANCE 



THE NAME OF FRANCE 

Give us a name to fill the mind 
With the shining thoughts that lead mankind, 
The glory of learning, the joy of art, — 
A name that tells of a splendid part 
In the long, long toil and the strenuous fight 
Of the human race to win its way 
From the feudal darkness into the day 
Of Freedom, Brotherhood, Equal Right, — 
A name like a star, a name of light- 
I give you France I 

Give us a name to stir the blood 
With a warmer glow and a swifter flood, 
At the touch of a courage that knows not fear, — 
A name like the sound of a trumpet, clear, 
And silver-sweet, and iron-strong, 
That calls three million men to their feet, 
Ready to march, and steady to meet 
The foes who threaten that name with wrong, — 
A name that rings like a battle-song. 
I give you France I 

Give us a name to move the heart 
With the strength that noble griefs impart, 
A name that speaks of the blood outpoured 
To save mankind from the sway of the sword, — 
A name that calls on the world to share 
In the burden of sacrificial strife 
"Where the cause at stake is the world's free life 
And the rule of the people everywhere, — 
A name like a vow, a name like a prayer. 
I give you France I 

Henry van Dyke 



VIVE LA FRANCE! 



31 



VIVE LA FRANCE! 

Franceline rose in the dawning gray, 
And her heart would dance though she knelt to 
pray, 

For her man Michel had holiday, 
Fighting for France. 

She offered her prayer by the cradle-side, 
And with baby palms folded in hers she cried : 
"If I have but one prayer, dear, crucified 
Christ — save France ! 

"But if I have two, then, by Mary's grace, 
Carry me safe to the meeting-place, 
Let me look once again on my dear love's face, 
Save him for France!" 

She crooned to her boy: "Oh, how glad he'll be 5 
Little three-months old, to set eyes on thee! 
For, 'Rather than gold, would I give,' wrote he, 
'A son to France.' 

"Come, now, be good, little stray sauterelle, 
For we're going by-by to thy papa Michel, 
But I '11 not say where for fear thou wilt tell, 
Little pigeon of France! 

"Six days' leave and a year between! 
But what would you have? In six days clean, 
Heaven was made," said Franceline, 
"Heaven and France." 



82 



FRANCE 



She came to the town of the nameless name, 
To the marching troops in the street she came, 
And she held high her boy like a taper flame 
Burning for France. 

Fresh from the trenches and gray with grime, 
Silent they march like a pantomime; 
"But what need of music? My heart beats time — 
Vive la France!" 

His regiment comes. Oh, then where is he? 
" There is dust in my eyes, for I cannot see, — 
Is that my Michel to the right of thee, 
Soldier of France?" 

Then out of the ranks a comrade fell, — 
"Yesterday — 't was a splinter of shell — 
And he whispered thy name, did thy poor Michel, 
Dying for France." 

The tread of the troops on the pavement throbbed 
Like a woman's heart of its last joy robbed, 
As she lifted her boy to the flag, and sobbed: 
"Vive la France!" 

Charlotte Holmes Crawford 

THE SOUL OF JEANNE D'ARC 

She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might 
come, 

Crowned, white-robed and adoring, with very reverence 
dumb, — 



THE SOUL OF JEANNE D'ARC 33 



She stood as a straight young soldiery confident, gallant, 
strong, 

Who asks a boon of his captain in the sudden hush of the 
drum. 

She said: "Now have I stayed too long in this my 
place of bliss, 

With these glad dead that, comforted, forget what sor- 
row is 

Upon that world whose stony stairs they climbed to 
come to this. 

"But lo, a cry hath torn the peace wherein so long I 
stayed, 

Like a trumpet's call at Heaven's wall from a herald 
unafraid, — 

A million voices in one cry, 'Where is the Maid, the 
Maid? 9 

"I had forgot from too much joy that olden task of 
mine, 

But I have heard a certain word shatter the chant 
divine, 

Have watched a banner glow and grow before mine 
eyes for sign. 

"I would return to that my land flung in the teeth of 
war, 

I would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure 
me no more, 

And don the armor that I knew, the valiant sword I 
bore. 



34 



FRANCE 



"And angels militant shall fling the gates of Heaven 
wide, 

And souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves 

on war's red tide 
Shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us 

as we ride. 

"For with me goes that soldier saint, Saint Michael of 
the sword, 

And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his 
lord, 

And men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure 
reward. 

"Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the 
end may be 

The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long 
agony; 

I would go singing down that road where fagots wait 
for me. 

<: Mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my 
head; 

So might I glow, a torch to show the path my heroes 
tread; 

My Captain ! Oh, my Captain, let me go back !" she 
said. 

Theodosia Garrison 



O GLORIOUS FRANCE 35 



O GLORIOUS FRANCE 

You have become a forge of snow-white fire, 

A crucible of molten steel, O France! 

Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn 

And fade in light for you, O glorious France ! 

They pass through meteor changes with a song 

Which to all islands and all continents 

Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, 

Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child, 

Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power, 

Nor many days spent in a chosen work, 

Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme 

Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths 

Of seventy years. 

These are not all of life, 
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder 
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead 
Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these 
Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision, 
And the keen ecstasy of fated strife, 
And divination of the loss as gain, 
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes 
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before 
The orient splendour of the face of Death, 
As a great light beside a shadowy sea; 
And in a high will's strenuous exercise, 
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength 
And is no more afraid, and in the stroke 
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence 
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth 
And mystical significance in time 



36 FRANCE 



Are instantly distilled to one clear drop 
Which mirrors earth and heaven. 

This is life 
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span 
When the breath of battle blows the smouldering 

spark. 
And across these seas 

We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling 
To cities, happiness, or daily toil 
For daily bread, or trail the long routine 
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine 
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup 
Empty and ringing by the finished feast; 
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight 
Of God against the olive woods. 

As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees 

With sacred joy first heard the voices, then 

Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field 

Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire, 

Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived 

The dream and known the meaning of the dream, 

And read its riddle : how the soul of man 

May to one greatest purpose make itself 

A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup 

Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall 

Turns sweet to souPs surrender. 

And you say: 
Take days for repetition, stretch your hands 
For mocked renewal of familiar things : 
The beaten path, the chair beside the window, 



TO FRANCE 



37 



The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep, 

And waking to the task, or many springs 

Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields — 

The prison-house grows close no less, the feast 

A place of memory sick for senses dulled 

Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time 

Grown weary cries Enough ! 

Edgar Lee Masters 

TO FRANCE 

Those who have stood for thy cause when the dark 
was around thee, 

Those who have pierced through the shadows and shin- 
ing have found thee, 

Those who have held to their faith in thy courage and 
power, 

Thy spirit, thy honor, thy strength for a terrible hour, 
Now can rejoice that they see thee in light and in 
glory, 

Facing whatever may come as an end to the story 
In calm undespairing, with steady eyes fixed on the 
morrow — 

The morn that is pregnant with blood and with death 
and with sorrow. 

And whether the victory crowns thee, O France the 
eternal, 

Or whether the smoke and the dusk of a nightfall 
infernal 

Gather about thee, and us, and the foe; and all treas- 
ures 

Run with the flooding of war into bottomless meas- 
ures — 



38 



FRANCE 



Fall what befalls: in this hour all those who are near 
thee 

And all who have loved thee, they rise and salute and 
revere thee! 

Herbert Jones 

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE 
August 14, 1914 

[Since the bombardment of Strasburg, August 14, 1870, her statue in 
Paris, representing Alsace, has been draped in mourning by the French 
people.l 

Near where the royal victims fell 

In days gone by, caught in the swell 

Of a ruthless tide 

Of human passion, deep and wide: 

There where we two 

A Nation's later sorrow knew — 

To-day, O friend! I stood 

Amid a self-ruled multitude 

That by nor sound nor word 

Betrayed how mightily its heart was stirred. 

A memory Time never could efface ■ — 
A memory of Grief — 

Like a great Silence brooded o'er the place; 
And men breathed hard, as seeking for relief 
From an emotion strong 

# That would not cry, though held in check too long. 

One felt that joy drew near — 
A joy intense that seemed itself to fear — 
Brightening in eyes that had been dull, 
As all with feeling gazed 



TO FRANCE 



39 



Upon the Strasburg figure, raised 
Above us — mourning, beautiful! 

Then one stood at the statue's base, and spoke — ■ 

Men needed not to ask what word; 

Each in his breast the message heard, 

Writ for him by Despair, 

That evermore in moving phrase 

Breathes from the Invalides and P&re Lachaise — 

Vainly it seemed, alas! 

But now, France looking on the image there, 
Hope gave her back the lost Alsace. 

A deeper hush fell on the crowd: 

A sound — the lightest — seemed too loud 

(Would, friend, you had been there!) 

As to that form the speaker rose, 

Took from her, fold on fold, 

The mournful crape, gray-worn and old, 

Her, proudly, to disclose, 

And with the touch of tender care 

That fond emotion speaks, 

'Mid tears that none could quite command, 

Placed the Tricolor in her hand, 

And kissed her on both cheeks! 

Florence Earle Coates 

TO FRANCE 

What is the gift we have given thee, Sister? 

What is the trust we have laid in thy hand? 
Hearts of our bravest, our best, and our dearest, 

Blood of our blood we have sown in thy land. 



(0 



FRANCE 



What for all time will the harvest be, Sister? 

What will spring up from the seed that is sown? 
Freedom and peace and goodwill among Nations, 

Love that will bind us with love all our own. 

Bright is the path that is opening before us, 

Upward and onward it mounts through the night; 

Sword shall not sever the bonds that unite us 
Leading the world to the fullness of light. 

Sorrow hath made thee more beautiful, Sister, 

Nobler and purer than ever before; 
We who are chastened by sorrow and anguish 

Hail thee as sister and queen evermore. 

Frederick George Scott 

QUI VIVE? 

Qui vive ? Who passes by up there? 

Who moves — what stirs in the startled air? 

W r hat whispers, thrills, exults up there? 

Qui vive ? 

" The Flags of France." 

What wind on a windless night is this, 
That breathes as light as a lover's kiss, 
That blows through the night with bugle notes, 
That streams like a pennant from a lance, 
That rustles, that floats? 

"The Flags of France." 

What richly moves, what lightly stirs, 
Like a noble lady in a dance, 



QUI VIVE? 



41 



When all men's eyes are in love with hers 
And needs must follow? 

"The Flags of France." 

What calls to the heart — and the heart has heard, 
Speaks, and the soul has obeyed the word, 
Summons, and all the years advance, 
And the world goes forward with France — with 

France? 
Who called? 

"The Flags of France." 

What flies — a glory, through the night, 
While the legions stream — a line of light, 
And men fall to the left and fall to the right, 
But they fall not? 

"The Flags of France." 

Qui vive ? Who comes? What approaches there? 
What soundless tumult, what breath in the air 
Takes the breath in the throat, the blood from the 
heart? 

In a flame of dark, to the unheard beat 

Of an unseen drum and fleshless feet, 

Without glint of barrel or bayonets' glance, 

They approach — they come. Who comes? (Hush! 

Hark!) 
"Quivive?" 

"The Flags of France." 

Uncover the head and kneel — kneel down, 
A monarch passes, without a crown, 
Let the proud tears fall but the heart beat high: 
The Greatest of All is passing by, 



42 



FRANCE 



On its endless march in the endless Plan: 
"Qui vive?" 

"The Spirit of Man." 

"0 Spirit of Man, pass on! Advance!" 
And they who lead, who hold the van? 
Kneel down! 

The Flags of France. 

Grace Ellery Channing 

Paris, 1917 



BELGIUM 



TO THE BELGIANS 



O race that Caesar knew, 
That won stern Roman praise, 
What land not envies you 
The laurel of these days? 

You built your cities rich 
Around each towered hall, — 
Without, the statued niche, 
Within, the pictured wall. 

Your ship-thronged wharves, your marts 
With gorgeous Venice vied. 
Peace and her famous arts 
W T ere yours : though tide on tide 

Of Europe's battle scourged 
Black field and reddened soil, 
From blood and smoke emerged 
Peace and her fruitful toil. 

Yet when the challenge rang, 
"The War-Lord comes; give room!" 
Fearless to arms you sprang 
Against the odds of doom. 

Like your own Damien 
Who sought that leper's isle 
To die a simple man 
For men with tranquil smile, 



46 



BELGIUM 



So strong in faith you dared 

Defy the giant, scorn 

Ignobly to be spared, 

Though trampled, spoiled, and torn, 

And in your faith arose 
And smote, and smote again, 
Till those astonished foes 
Reeled from their mounds of slain, 

The faith that the free soul, 
Untaught by force to quail, 
Through fire and dirge and dole 
Prevails and shall prevail. 

Still for your frontier stands 
The host that knew no dread, 
Your little, stubborn land's 
Nameless, immortal dead. 

Laurence Binyon 

BELGIUM 

La Belgique ne regretie rien 

Not with her ruined silver spires, 
Not with her cities shamed and rent, 
Perish the imperishable fires 
That shape the homestead from the tent. 

Wherever men are staunch and free, 
There shall she keep her fearless state, 
And homeless, to great nations be 
The home of all that makes them great. 

Edith Wharton 



TO BELGIUM IN EXILE 47 



TO BELGIUM 

Champion of human honour, let us lave 

Your feet and bind your wounds on bended knee. 

Though coward hands have nailed you to the tree 
And shed your innocent blood and dug your grave, 
Rejoice and live! Your oriflamme shall wave — 

While man has power to perish and be free — 

A golden flame of holiest Liberty, 
Proud as the dawn and as the sunset brave. 

Belgium, where dwelleth reverence for right 
Enthroned above all ideals; where your fate 

And your supernal patience and your might 
Most sacred grow in human estimate, 

You shine a star above this stormy night 
Little no more, but infinitely great. 

Eden Phillpotts 

TO BELGIUM IN EXILE 

iLines dedicated to one of her priests, by whose words they were prompted.] 

Land of the desolate, Mother of tears, 
Weeping your beauty marred and torn, 

Your children tossed upon the spears, 
Your altars rent, your hearths forlorn, 

Where Spring has no renewing spell, 

And Love no language save a long Farewell! 

Ah, precious tears, and each a pearl, 
W T hose price — for so in God we trust 

Who saw them fall in that blind swirl 
Of ravening flame and reeking dust — 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 



RUSSIA — AMERICA 



A wind in the world! The dark departs; 
The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and 
bones, 

Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones, 
And slavery is lifted from your hearts. 

A wind in the world! O Company 
Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain/ 
Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain 
Go shrinking out across a summer sky. 

A wind in the world! Our God shall be 

In all the future left, no kingly doll 

Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole, 

But walk the earth — a man, in Charity. 



A wind in the world! And doubts are blown 
To dust along, and the old stars come forth — 
Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth 
A field of broken spears and flowers strown. 

A wind in the world ! Now truancy 
From the true self is ended; to her part 
Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart 
A great America cries : Death to Tyranny ! 

A wind in the world! And we have come 
Together, sea by sea; in all the lands 
Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands 
With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home! 

John Galsworthy 



54 RUSSIA AND AMERICA 

TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE 

Land of the Martyrs — of the martyred dead 
And martyred living — now of nobie fame ! 
Long wert thou saddest of the nations, wed 
To Sorrow as the fire to the flame. 
Not yet relentless History had writ of Teuton shame. 

Thou knewest all the gloom of hope deferred. 

'Twixt God and Russia wrong had built such bar 
Each by the other could no more be heard. 

Seen through the cloud, the child's familiar star, 
That once made Heaven near, had made it seem more 
far. 

Land of the Breaking Dawn! No more look back 
To that long night that nevermore can be : 

The sunless dungeon and the exile's track. 
To the world's dreams of terror let it flee. 
To gentle April cruel March is now antiquity. 

Yet — of the Past one sacred relic save: 

That boundary-post 'twixt Russia and Despair, — 
Set where the dead might look upon his grave, — 
Kissed by him with his last-breathed Russian air. 
Keep it to witness to the world what heroes still may 
dare. 

Land of New Hope, no more the minor key, 
No more the songs of exile long and lone; 
Thy tears henceforth be tears of memory. 

Sing, with the joy the joyless would have known 
Who for this visioned happiness so gladly gave their 
own. 



TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE 55 



Land of the warm heart and the friendly hand, 

Strike the free chord; no more the muted strings! 
Forever let the equal record stand — 

A thousand winters for this Spring of Springs, 
That to a warring world, through thee, millennial 
longing brings. 

On thy white tablets, cleansed of royal stain, 

What message to the future mayst thou write ! — 
The People's Law, the bulwark of their reign, 
And vigilant Liberty, of ancient might, 
And Brotherhood, that can alone lead to the loftiest 
height. 

Take, then, our hearts' rejoicing overflow, 
Thou new-born daughter of Democracy, 
Whose coming sets the expectant earth aglow. 
Soon the glad skies thy proud new flag shall see, 
And hear thy chanted hymns of hope for Russia new 
and free. 

Robert Underwood Johnson 

AynU 1917 



ITALY 



ITALY IN ARMS 



Of all my dreams by night and day, 
One dream will evermore return, 

The dream of Italy in May; 

The sky a brimming azure urn 

Where lights of amber brood and burn; 

The doves about San Marco's square, 
The swimming Campanile tower, 
The giants, hammering out the hour, 
The palaces, the bright lagoons, 

The gondolas gliding here and there 

Upon the tide that sways and swoons. 

The domes of San Antonio, 

Where Padua 'mid her mulberry-trees 
Reclines; Adige's crescent flow 

Beneath Verona's balconies; 

Rich Florence of the Medicis; 
Sienna's starlike streets that climb 

From hill to hill; Assisi well 

Remembering the holy spell 

Of rapt St. Francis; with her crown 
Of battlements, embossed by time, 

Stern old Perugia looking down. 

Then, mother of great empires, Rome, 
City of the majestic past, 

That o'er far leagues of alien foam 
The shadows of her eagles cast, 
Imperious still; impending, vast, 



60 



ITALY 



The Colosseum's curving line; 

Pillar and arch and colonnade; 
St. Peter's consecrated shade, 

And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays; 
The ruins on the Palatine 

With all their memories of dead days. 

And Naples, with her sapphire arc 

Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore; 

Above her, like a demon stark, 

The dark fire-mountain evermore 
Looming portentous, as of yore; 

Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves; 
Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines 
And olives, and the shattered shrines 

Of Psestum where the gray ghosts tread, 

And where the wilding rose still waves 

As when by Greek girls garlanded. 

But hark ! What sound the ear dismays, 

Mine Italy, mine Italy? 
Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze 
Of loveliness spread over thee! 
Yet since the grapple needs must be, 
I who have wandered in the night 

"With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known, 
Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown, 
Met Angelo and Raffael, 
Against iconoclastic might 

In this grim hour must wish thee well ! 

Clinton Scollard 



ON THE ITALIAN FRONT 61 



ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI 

"I will die cheering, if I needs must die; 

So shall my last breath write upon my lips 

Viva Italia I when my spirit slips 
Down the great darkness from the mountain sky; 
And those who shall behold me where I lie 

Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips 
. From glory into glory! the eclipse 
Of death is vanquished! Lo. his victor-cry!' 

" Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine, 
The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay! 

Let thy dear light from my dead body shine 
And to the passer-by thy message say: 

*Ecco! though heaven has made my skies divine, 
My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'" 

George Edward Woodberry 



AUSTRALIA 



AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND 



By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done, 
By all the life blood spilt to serve Thy need, 
By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed, 

By all Thy dream in us anew begun; 

By all the guerdon English sire to son 

Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed, 
By all Thine agony, of God decreed 

For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one. 

Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips, 
Honour and life we hold from none but Thee, 
And if we live Thy pensioners no more 
But seek a nation's might of men and ships, 

'T is but that when the world is black with war 
Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free. 

Archibald T. Strong 

August, ldlli 



CANADA 




CANADA TO ENGLAND 

Great names of thy great captains gone before 
Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee 
Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free 

Fine souls who dared to front a world in war. 

Such only may outreach the envious years 

Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove, 
Nurtured in one remembrance and one love 

Too high for passion and too stern for tears. 



O little isle our fathers held for home, 

Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts 

Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land: 
Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam, 
Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts 
Of all past greatnesses about thee stand. 

Marjorie L. C. Piclcthall 

LANGEMARCK AT YPRES 

This is the ballad of Langemarck, 

A story of glory and might; 
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part 

In the great grim fight. 



It was April fair on the Flanders Fields, 

But the dreadest April then 
That ever the years, in their fateful flight, 

Had brought to this world of men. 



70 



CANADA 



North and east, a monster wall, 

The mighty Hun ranks lay, 
With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench, 

Menacing, grim and gray. 

And south and west, like a serpent of fire, 

Serried the British lines, 
And in between, the dying and dead, 
And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud, 

On the fair, sweet Belgian vines. 

And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut, 

Like a scimitar, shining and keen, 
Gleaming out of that ominous gloom, 

Old France's hosts were seen. 

When out of the grim Hun lines one night, 

There rolled a sinister smoke; — 
A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud, 

And death lurked in its cloak. 

On a fiend-like wind it curled along 

Over the brave French ranks, 
Like a monster tree its vapours spread, 

In hideous, burning banks 
Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night 

With their sulphurous demon danks. 

And men went mad with horror, and fled 
From that terrible, strangling death, 

That seemed to sear both body and soul 
With its baleful, flaming breath. 



LANGEMARCK AT YPRES 71 



Till even the little dark men of the south, 

Who feared neither God nor man, 
Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes, 

Broke their battalions and ran : — 

Ran as they never had run before, 

Gasping, and fainting for breath; 
For they knew 'twas no human foe that slew; 

And that hideous smoke meant death. 

Then red in the reek of that evil cloud, 

The Hun swept over the plain; 
And the murderer's dirk did its monster work, 

'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain; 

Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes 

Had broken that wall of steel; 
And that soon, through this breach in the free- 
man's dyke, 

His trampling hosts would wheel; — 

And sweep to the south in ravaging might, 

And Europe's peoples again 
Be trodden under the tyrant's heel, 

Like herds, in the Prussian pen. 

But in that line on the British right, 

There massed a corps amain, 
Of men who hailed from a far west land 

Of mountain and forest and plain; 

Men new to war and its dreadest deeds, 

But noble and staunch and true; 
Men of the open, East and West, 

Brew of old Britain's brew. 



72 



CANADA 



These were the men out there that night, 

When Hell loomed close ahead; 
Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout, 

And breathed those gases dread; 
While some went under and some went mad; 

But never a man there fled. 

For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight, 

And keep on fighting still; — ■ 
Britain said, fight, and fight they would, 
Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood 

Came over that hideous hill. 

Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band, 

Where no soul hoped to live; 
For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men, 

Were hopeless odds to give. 

Yea, fought they on! 9 T was Friday eve, 
When that demon gas drove down; 

5 T was Saturday eve that saw them still 
Grimly holding their own; 

Sunday, Monday, saw them yet, 

A steadily lessening band, 
With "no surrender" in their hearts, 

But the dream of a far-off land, 

Where mother and sister and love would weep 
For the hushed heart lying still; — 

But never a thought but to do their part, 
And work the Empire's will. 



CANADIANS 73 



Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back, 
They fought there under the dark, 

And won for Empire, God and Right, 
At grim, red Langemarck. 

Wonderful battles have shaken this world, 

Since the Dawn-God overthrew Dis; 
Wonderful struggles of right against wrong, 
Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song, 
But never a greater than this. 

Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava, 

Marathon's godlike stand; 
But never a more heroic deed, 
And never a greater warrior breed, 

In any war-man's land. 

This is the ballad of Langemarck, 

A story of glory and might; 
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part 

In the great, grim fight. 

Wilfred Campbell 

CANADIANS 

With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on 
their hoofs, 

With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in 
the roofs, 

Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye, 
Through our English village the Canadians go by. 



74 



CANADA 



Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car, 
Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star, 
Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein, 
Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again! 

Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip, 
Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the 
ship, 

Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin's call, 
Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal! 

Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds than 
. they 

Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues 
away; 

But till war hath need of them, lightly lie their reins, 
Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes. 

Will H. Ogilvie 



LIEGE 



THE KAISER AND BELGIUM 



He said: "Thou petty people, let me pass. 

What canst thou do but bow to me and kneel? " 
But sudden a dry land caught fire like grass, 

And answer hurtled but from shell and steel. 

He looked for silence, but a thunder came 

Upon him, from Liege a leaden hail. 
All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame 

Till at her gates amazed his legions quail. 

Take heed, for now on haunted ground they tread; 

There bowed a mightier w T ar lord to his fall : 
Fear! lest that very green grass again grow red 

With blood of German now as then with Gaul. 

If him whom God destroys He maddens first, 
Then thy destruction slake thy madman's thirst. 

Stephen Phillips 

THE BATTLE OF LIEGE 

Now spake the Emperor to all his shining battle 
forces, 

To the Lancers, and the Rifles, to the Gunners and the 
Horses ; — 

And his pride surged up within him as he saw their 

banners stream ! — 
M 'T is a twelve-day march to Paris, by the road our 

fathers travelled, 
And the prize is half an empire when the scarlet road 's 

unravelled — 



78 



LlfiGE 



Go you now across the border, 
God's decree and William's order — 
Climb the frowning Belgian ridges 
With your naked swords agleam! 
Seize the City of the Bridges — 
Then get on, get on to Paris — 
To the jewelled streets of Paris — 
To the lovely woman, Paris, that has driven me to 
dream!" 

A hundred thousand fighting men ' 

They climbed the frowning ridges, 

With their flaming swords drawn free 

And their pennants at their knee. 

They went up to their desire, 

To the City of the Bridges, 

With their naked brands outdrawn 

Like the lances of the dawn ! 

In a swelling surf of fire, 

Crawling higher — higher — higher — 

Till they crumpled up and died 

Like a sudden wasted tide, 

And the thunder in their faces beat them down and 
flung them wide! 

They had paid a thousand men, 

Yet they formed and came again, 

For they heard the silver bugles sounding challenge to 

their pride, 
And they rode with swords agleam 
For the glory of a dream, 

And they stormed up to the cannon's mouth and with* 
ered there, and died. . . • 



THE BATTLE OF LIEGE 



79 



The daylight lay in ashes 
On the blackened western hill, 
And the dead were calm and still; 
But the Night was torn with gashes — 
Sudden ragged crimson gashes — 
And the siege-guns snarled and roared, 
With their flames thrust like a sword, 
And the tranquil moon came riding on the heaven's 
silver ford. 

What a fearful world was there, 

Tangled in the cold moon's hair ! 

Man and beast lay hurt and screaming, 

(Men must die when Kings are dreaming!) — 

While within the harried town 

Mothers dragged their children down 

As the awful rain came screaming, 

For the glory of a Crown! 

So the Morning flung her cloak 

Through the hanging pall of smoke — 

Trimmed with red, it was, and dripping with a deep 

and angry stain! 
And the Day came walking then 
Through a lane of murdered men, 
And her light fell down before her like a Cross upon 

the plain! 
But the forts still crowned the height 
With a bitter iron crown! 
They had lived to flame and fight, 
They had lived to keep the Town ! 
And they poured their havoc down 
All that day . . . and all that night. . . . 



80 



LIEGE 



While four times their number came, 
Pawns that played a bloody game ! — 
Vtith a silver trumpeting, 
For the glory of the King, 

To the barriers of the thunder and the fury of the 
flame! 

So they stormed the iron Hill, 
O'er the sleepers lying still, 

And their trumpets sang them forward through the 

dull succeeding dawns, 
But the thunder flung them wide, 
And they crumpled up and died, — 
They had waged the war of monarchs — and they died 

the death of pawns. 

But the forts still stood. . . . Their breath 
Swept the foeman like a blade, 
Though ten thousand men were paid 
To the hungry purse of Death, 
Though the field was wet with blood, 
Still the bold defences stood, 
Stood! 

And the King came out with his bodyguard at the 

day's departing gleam — 
And the moon rode up behind the smoke and showed 

the King his dream. 

Dana Burnet 



VERDUN 



MEN OF VERDUN 



There are five men in the moonlight 

That by their shadows stand; 
Three hobble humped on crutches, 

And two lack each a hand. 

Frogs somewhere near the roadside 

Chorus their chant absorbed : 
But a hush breathes out of the dream-light 

That far in heaven is orbed. 

It is gentle as sleep falling 

And wide as thought can span, 

The ancient peace and wonder 
That brims the heart of man. 

Beyond the hills it shines now 

On no peace but the dead, 
On reek of trenches thunder-shocked, 
Tense fury of wills in wrestle locked, 

A chaos crumbled red! 

The five men in the moonlight 

Chat, joke, or gaze apart. 
They talk of days and comrades, 

But each one hides his heart. 

They wear clean cap and tunic, 

As when they went to war; 
A gleam comes where the medal 's pinned : 

But they will fight no more. 



84 



VERDUN 



The shadows, maimed and antic, 

Gesture and shape distort, 
Like mockery of a demon dumb 
Out of the hell-din whence they come 

That dogs them for his sport : 

But as if dead men were risen 

And stood before me there 
With a terrible fame about them blown 

In beams of spectral air, 

I see them, men transfigured 

As in a dream, dilate 
Fabulous with the Titan-throb 

Of battling Europe's fate; 

For history 's hushed before them, 
And legend flames afresh, — 

Verdun, the name of thunder, 
Is written on their flesh. 

Laurence Binyon 

VERDUN 

Three hundred thousand men, but not enough 
To break this township on a winding stream; 
More yet must fall, and more, ere the red stuff 
That built a nation's manhood may redeem 
The Master's hopes and realize his dream. 

They pave the way to Verdun; on their dust 
The Hohenzollerns mount and, hand in hand, 
Gaze haggard south; for yet another thrust 



GUNS OF VERDUN 



85 



And higher hills must heap, ere they may stand 
To feed their eyes upon the promised land. 

One barrow, borne of women, lifts them high, 
Built up of many a thousand human dead. 
Nursed on their mothers' bosoms, now they lie — 
A Golgotha, all shattered, torn and sped, 
A mountain for these royal feet to tread. 

A Golgotha, upon whose carrion clay 
Justice of myriad men still in the womb 
Shall heave two crosses; crucify and flay 
Two memories accurs'd; then in the tomb 
Of world-wide execration give them room. 

Verdun! A clarion thy name shall ring 
Adown the ages and the Nations see 
Thy monuments of glory. Now we bring 
Thank-offering and bend the reverent knee, 
Thou star upon the crown of Liberty! 

Eden Phillpotts 

GUNS OF VERDUN 

Guns of Verdun point to Metz 
From the plated parapets; 
Guns of Metz grin back again 
O'er the fields of fair Lorraine. 

Guns of Metz are long and grey, 
Growling through a summer day; 
Guns of Verdun, grey and long, 
Boom an echo of their song. 



86 



VERDUN 



Guns of Metz to Verdun roar, 
"Sisters, you shall foot the score;" 
Guns of Verdun say to Metz, 
"Fear not, for we pay our debts." 

Guns of Metz they grumble, "When?" 
Guns of Verdun answer then, 
"Sisters, when to guard Lorraine 
Gunners lay you East again!" 

Patrick R. Chalmers 



OXFORD 



THE SPIRES OF OXFORD 

I saw the spires of Oxford 

As I was passing by, 
The gray spires of Oxford 

Against the pearl-gray sky. 
My heart was with the Oxford men 

Who went abroad to die. 

The years go fast in Oxford, 

The golden years and gay, 
The hoary Colleges look down 

On careless boys at play. 
But when the bugles sounded war 

They put their games away. 

They left the peaceful river, 

The cricket-field, the quad, 
The shaven lawns of Oxford, 

To seek a bloody sod — 
They gave their merry youth away 

For country and for God. 

God rest you, happy gentlemen, 
Who laid your good lives down, 

Who took the khaki and the gun 
Instead of cap and gown. 

God bring you to a fairer place 
Than even Oxford town. 

Winifred M. Letts 



90 



OXFORD 



OXFORD IN WAR-TIME 

[The Boat Race will not be held this year (1915). The whole of last year's 
Oxford Eight and the great majority of the cricket and football teams are 
serving the King.] 

Under the tow-path past the barges 
Never an eight goes flashing by; 

Never a blatant coach on the marge is 
Urging his crew to do or die; 

Never the critic we knew enlarges, 
Fluent, on How and Why! 



Once by the Iffley Road November 
Welcomed the Football men aglow, 

Covered with mud, as you '11 remember, 
Eager to vanquish Oxford's foe. 

Where are the teams of last December? 
Gone — where they had to go! 



Where are her sons who waged at cricket 
Warfare against the foeman-friend? 

Far from the Parks, on a harder wicket, 
Still they attack and still defend; 

Playing a greater game, they '11 stick it, 
Fearless until the end! 



Oxford's goodliest children leave her, 

Hastily thrusting books aside; 
Still the hurrying weeks bereave her, 

Filling her heart with joy and pride; 
Only the thought of you can grieve her, 

You who have fought and died. 

W. Snow 



OXFORD IN WAR-TIME 91 



OXFORD REVISITED IN WAR-TIME 

Beneath fair Magdalen's storied towers 
I wander in a dream, 
And hear the mellow chimes float out 
O'er Cherwell's ice-bound stream. 

Throstle and blackbird stiff with cold 
Hop on the frozen grass; 
Among the aged, upright oaks 
The dun deer slowly pass. 

The chapel organ rolls and swells, 
And voices still praise God; 
But ah! the thought of youthful friends 
Who lie beneath the sod. 

Now wounded men with gallant eyes 
Go hobbling down the street, 
And nurses from the hospitals 
Speed by with tireless feet. 

The town is full of uniforms, 
And through the stormy sky, 
Frightening the rooks from the tallest trees, 
The aeroplanes roar by. 

The older faces still are here, 
More grave and true and kind, 
Ennobled by the steadfast toil 
Of patient heart and mind. 



92 



OXFORD 



And old-time friends are dearer grown 
To fill a double place: 
Unshaken faith makes glorious 
Each forward-looking face. 

Old Oxford walls are grey and worn: 
She knows the truth of tears, 
But to-day she stands in her ancient pride 
Crowned with eternal years. 

Gone are her sons: yet her heart is glad 
In the glory of their youth, 
For she brought them forth to live or die 
By freedom, justice, truth. 

Cold moonlight falls on silent towers; 
The young ghosts walk with the old; 
But Oxford dreams of the dawn of May 
And her heart is free and bold. 

Tertius van Dyke 

Magdalen College, 
January, 1917 



REFLECTIONS 



SONNETS WRITTEN IN THE FALL OP 
1914 



I 

Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine, 
Who round enring the European fray! 
Heard ye the trumpet sound? "The Day! the 
Day! 

The last that shall on England's Empire shine! 

The Parliament that broke the Right Divine 
Shall see her realm of reason swept away, 
And lesser nations shall the sword obey — 

The sword o'er all carve the great world's design!" 

So on the English Channel boasts the foe 

On whose imperial brow death's helmet nods. 

Look where his hosts o'er bloody Belgium go, 
And mix a nation's past with blazing sods ! 

A kingdom's waste! a people's homeless woe! 
Man's broken Word, and violated gods! 

II 

Far fall the day when England's realm shall see 

The sunset of dominion! Her increase 

Abolishes the man-dividing seas, 
And frames the brotherhood on earth to be! 
She, in free peoples planting sovereignty, 

Orbs half the civil world in British peace; 

And though time dispossess her, and she cease, 
Rome-like she greatens in man's memory. 



96 REFLECTIONS 



Oh, many a crown shall sink in war's turmoil, 
And many a new republic light the sky, 

Fleets sweep the ocean, nations till the soil. 
Genius be born and generations die, 

Orient and Occident together toil, 

Ere such a mighty work man rears on high! 

Ill 

Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread 

The wine-press of the nations; fast the blood 
Pours from the side of Europe; in the flood 

On the septentrional watershed 

The rivers of fair France are running red! 
England, the mother-aerie of our brood, 
That on the summit of dominion stood, 

Shakes in the blast: heaven battles overhead! 

Lift up thy head, O Rheims, of ages heir 

That treasured up in thee their glorious sum; 

Upon whose brow, prophetically fair, 

Flamed the great morrow of the world to come; 

Haunt with thy beauty this volcanic air 

Ere yet thou close, O Flower of Christendom! 

IV 

As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse 

Sweeps on the earth, and spreads a spectral air, 
As if the universe were dying there, 

On continent and isle the darkness dips 

Unwonted gloom, and on the Atlantic slips; 
So in the night the Belgian cities flare 
Horizon-wide; the wandering people fare 

Along the roads, and load the fleeing ships. 



SONNETS 



97 



And westward borne that planetary sweep 
Darkening o'er England and her times to be, 

Already steps upon the ocean-deep! 

Watch well, my country, that unearthly sea, 

Lest when thou thinkest not, and in thy sleep, 
Unapt for war, that gloom enshadow thee. 

V 

I pray for peace; yet peace is but a prayer. 

How many wars have been in my brief years! 

x\ll races and all faiths, both hemispheres, 
My eyes have seen embattled everywhere 
The wide earth through; yet do I not despair 

Of peace, that slowly through far ages nears; 

Though not to me the golden morn appears, 
My faith is perfect in time's issue fair. 

For man doth build on an eternal scale, 
And his ideals are framed of hope deferred; 

The millennium came not; yet Christ did not fail, 
Though ever unaccomplished is His word; 

Him Prince of Peace, though unenthroned, we hail 
Supreme when in all bosoms He be heard. 

VI 

This is my faith, and my mind's heritage, 
Wherein I toil, though in a lonely place, 
Who yet world-wide survey the human race 

Unequal from wild nature disengage 

Body and soul, and life's old strife assuage; 
Still must abide, till heaven perfect its grace, 
And love grown wisdom sweeten in man's face, 

Alike the Christian and the heathen rage. 



98 



REFLECTIONS 



The tutelary genius of mankind 

Ripens by slow degrees the final State, 

That in the soul shall its foundations find 
And only in victorious love grow great; 

Patient the heart must be, humble the mind, 
That doth the greater births of time await! 

VII 

Whence not unmoved I see the nations form 
From Dover to the fountains of the Rhine, 
A hundred leagues, the scarlet battle-line, 

And by the Vistula great armies swarm, 

A vaster flood; rather my breast grows warm, 
Seeing all peoples of the earth combine 
Under one standard, with one countersign, 

Grown brothers in the universal storm. 

And never through the wide world yet ther% r&ng 
A mightier summons! O Thou who from the side 

Of Athens and the loins of Caesar sprang, 

Strike, Europe, Yvdth half the coming world allied 

For those ideals for which, since Homer sang, 
The hosts of thirty centuries have died. 

George Edward Woodberry 

THE WAR FILMS 

O living pictures of the dead, 

O songs without a sound, 
O fellowship whose phantom tread 

Hallows a phantom ground — 
How in a gleam have these revealed 

The faith we had not found. 



THE SEARCHLIGHTS 99 



We have sought God in a cloudy Heaven, 
We have passed by God on earth: 

His seven sins and his sorrows seven, 
His wayworn mood and mirth, 

Like a ragged cloak have hid from us 
The secret of his birth. 

Brother of men, when now I see 

The lads go forth in line, 
Thou knowest my heart is hungry in me 1 

As for thy bread and wine; 
Thou knowest my heart is bowed in me 

To take their death for mine. 

Henry Newbolt 

THE SEARCHLIGHTS 

[Political morality differs from individual morality, because there is no 
Blower above the State. — General von Bernhardi.] 

Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight, 
The lean black cruisers search the sea. 

Night-long their level shafts of light 
Revolve, and find no enemy. 

Only they know each leaping wave 

May hide the lightning, and their grave. 

And in the land they guard so well 
Is there no silent watch to keep? 

An age is dying, and the bell 

Rings midnight on a vaster deep. 

But over all its waves, once more 
. The searchlights move, from shore to shore. 



100 



REFLECTIONS 



And captains that we thought were dead, 
And dreamers that we thought were dumb, 

And voices that we thought were fled, 
Arise, and call us, and we come; 

And "Search in thine own soul," they cry; 

"For there, too, lurks thine enemy." 

Search for the foe in thine own soul, 
The sloth, the intellectual pride; 

The trivial jest that veils the goal 
For which our fathers lived and died; 

The lawless dreams, the cynic Art, 

That rend thy nobler self apart. 

Not far, not far into the night, 

These level swords of light can pierce; 

Yet for her faith does England fight, 
Her faith in this our universe, 

Believing Truth and Justice draw 

From founts of everlasting law; 

The law that rules the stars, our stay, 

Our compass through the world's wide sea, 

The one sure light, the one sure way, 
The one firm base of Liberty; 

The one firm road that men have trod 

Through Chaos to the throne of God. 

Therefore a Power above the State, 
The unconquerable Power, returns, 

The fire, the fire that made her great 
Once more upon her altar burns, 

Once more, redeemed and healed and whole, 

She moves to the Eternal Goal. 

Alfred Noyes 



MEN WHO MARCH AWAY 101 



CHRISTMAS: 1915 

Now is the midnight of the nations : dark 
Even as death, beside her blood-dark seas, 
Earth, like a mother in birth agonies, 

Screams in her travail, and the planets hark 

Her million-throated terror. Naked, stark, 
Her torso writhes enormous, and her knees 
Shudder against the shadowed Pleiades, 

Wrenching the night's imponderable arc. 

Christ ! What shall be delivered to the morn 
Out of these pangs, if ever indeed another 
Morn shall succeed this night, or this vast 
mother 

Survive to know the blood-spent offspring, torn 
From her racked flesh? — What splendour 
from the smother? 

What new-wing'd world, or mangled god still- 
born? 

Percy Mac Kay e 

"MEN WHO MARCH AWAY" 
(Song of the Soldiers) 

What of the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away 

Ere the barn-cocks say 

Night is growing gray, 
To hazards whence no tears can win us; 
What of the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away! 



102 



REFLECTIONS 



Is it a purblind prank, think you, 

Friend with the musing eye 

Who watch us stepping by, 

With doubt and dolorous sigh? 
Can much pondering so hoodwink you ? 
Is it a purblind prank, O think you, 

Friend with the musing eye? 

Nay. We see well what we are doing, 

Though some may not see — 

Dalliers as they be — 

England's need are we; 
Her distress would leave us rueing: 
Nay. We well see what we are doing, 

Though some may not see! 

In our heart of hearts believing 

Victory crowns the just, 

And that braggarts must 

Surely bite the dust, 
Press we to the field ungrieving, 
In our heart of hearts believing 

Victory crowns the just. 

Hence the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away 

Ere the barn-cocks say 

Night is growing gray, 
To hazards whence no tears can win us; 
Hence the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away. 

Thomas Hardy 

September 5, 1914 



WE WILLED IT NOT 



103 



WE WILLED IT NOT 

We willed it not. We have not lived in hate, 
Loving too well the shires of England thrown 
From sea to sea to covet your estate, 
Or wish one flight of fortune from your throne. 

We had grown proud because the nations stood 
Hoping together against the calumny 
That, tortured of its old barbarian blood, 
Barbarian still the heart of man should be. 

Builders there are who name you overlord, 
Building with us the citadels of light, 
Who hold as we this chartered sin abhorred f 
And cry you risen ICsesar of the Night. 

Beethoven speaks with Milton on this day, 
And Shakespeare's word with Goethe's beat* the 
sky, 

In witness of the birthright you betray, 
In wutness of the vision you deny. 

We love the hearth, the quiet hills, the song, 
The friendly gossip come from every land; 
And very peace were now a nameless wrong — • 
You thrust this bitter quarrel to our hand. 

For this your pride the tragic armies go, 
And the grim navies watch along the seas; 
You trade in death, you mock at life, you throw 
To God the tumult of your blasphemies. 



104 REFLECTIONS 



You rob us of our love-right. It is said. 
In treason to the world you are enthroned. 
We rise, and, by the yet ungathered dead, 
Not lightly shall the treason be atoned. 

John Drinkwater 

THE DEATH OF PEACE 
Peace 

Now slowly sinks the day-long labouring Sun 
Behind the tranquil trees and old church-tower; 
And we who watch him know our day is done; 
For us too comes the evening — and the hour. 

The sunbeams slanting through those ancient 
trees, 

The sunlit lichens burning on the byre, 
The lark descending, and the homing bees, 
Proclaim the sweet relief all things desire. 

Golden the river brims beneath the west, 

And holy peace to all the world is given; 

The songless stockdove preens her ruddied breast; 

The blue smoke windeth like a prayer to heaven. 

* 

O old, old England, land of golden peace, 
Thy fields are spun with gossameres of gold, 
And golden garners gather thy increase, 
And plenty crowns thy loveliness untold. 



THE DEATH OF PEACE 105 



By sunlight or by starlight ever thou 
Art excellent in beauty manifold; 
The still star victory ever gems thy brow; 
Age canot age thee, ages make thee old. 

Thy beauty brightens with the evening sun 
Across the long-lit meads and distant spire: 
So sleep thou well — like his thy labour done; 
Rest in thy glory as he rests in fire. 

But even in this hour of soft repose 
A gentle sadness chides us like a friend — 
The sorrow of the joy that overflows, 
The burden of the beauty that must end. 

And from the fading sunset comes a cry, 
And in the twilight voices wailing past, 
Like wild-swans calling, ' ' When we rest we die, 
And woe to them that linger and are last"; 

And as the Sun sinks, sudden in heav'n new born 
There shines an armed Angel like a Star, 
Who cries above the darkling world in scorn, 
"God comes to Judgment. Learn ye what ye are." 

* * 

From fire to umber fades the sunset-gold, 
From umber into silver and twilight; 
The infant flowers their orisons have told 
And turn together folded for the night; 



106 



REFLECTIONS 



The garden urns are black against the eve; 
The white moth flitters through the fragrant glooms; 
How beautiful the heav'ns! — But yet we grieve 
And wander restless from the lighted rooms. 

For through the world to-night a murmur thrills 
As at some new-born prodigy of time — 
Peace dies like twilight bleeding on the hills, 
And Darkness creeps to hide the hateful crime. 

The Death of Peace 

Art thou no more, Maiden Heaven-born, 
Peace, bright Angel of the windless morn? 
Who comest down to bless our furrow'd fields, 
Or stand like Beauty smiling 'mid the corn: 

Mistress of mirth and ease and summer dreams, 
Who lingerest among the woods and streams 
To help us heap the harvest 'neath the moon, 
And homeward laughing lead the lumb'ring teams: 

Who teachest to our children thy wise lore; 
Who keepest full the goodman's golden store; 
Who crownest Life with plenty, Death with flow'rs; 
Peace, Queen of Kindness — but of earth, no more. 

* 

Not thine but ours the fault, thy care was vain; 
For this that we have done be ours the pain; 
Thou gavest much, as He who gave us all, 
And as we slew Him for it thou art slain. 



THE DEATH OF PEACE 107 



Heav'n left to men the moulding of their fate: 
To live as wolves or pile the pillar' d State — 
Like boars and bears to grunt and growl in mire, 
Or dwell aloft, effulgent gods, elate. 

Thou lif tedst us : we slew and with thee fell — 
From golden thrones of wisdom weeping fell. 
Fate rends the chaplets from our feeble brows; 
The spires of Heaven fade in fogs of hell. 

* * 

She faints, she falls; her dying eyes are dim; 
Her fingers play with those bright buds she bore 
To please us, but that she can bring no more; 
And dying yet she smiles — as Christ on him 
Who slew Him slain. Her eyes so beauteous 
Are lit with tears shed — not for herself but us. 

The gentle Beings of the hearth and home; 

The lovely Dryads of her aisled woods; 

The Angels that do dwell in solitudes 

Where she dwelleth; and joyous Spirits that roam 

To bless her bleating flocks and fruitful lands; 

Are gather'd there to weep, and kiss her dying hands. 

"Look, look," they cry, "she is not dead, she breathes! 
And we have staunched the damned wound and deep, 
The cavern-car ven wound. She doth but sleep 
And will awake. Bring wine, and new-wound wreaths 
Wherewith to crown awaking her dear head, 
And make her Queen again." — But no, for Peace was 
dead. 



108 



REFLECTIONS 



And then there came black Lords; and Dwarfs 

obscene 

With lavish tongues; and Trolls; and treacherous 
Things 

Like loose-lipp'd Councillors and cruel Kings 
Who sharpen lies and daggers subterrene: 
And flashed their evil eyes and weeping cried, 
"We ruled the world for Peace. By her own hand 
she died." 

* 

In secret he made sharp the bitter blade, 
And poison'd it with bane of lies and drew, 
And stabb'd — O God! the Cruel Cripple slew; 
And cowards fled or lent him trembling aid. 
She fell and died — in all the tale of time 
The direst deed e'er done, the most accursed 
crime. 

Ronald Ross 

IN WAR-TIME 
(An American Homeward-Bound) 

Further and further we leave the scene 
Of war — and of England's care; 

I try to keep my mind serene — 
But my heart stays there; 

For a distant song of pain and wrong 

My spirit doth deep confuse, 
And I sit all day on the deck, and long — 

And long for news! 



THE ANVIL 



103 



I seem to see them in battle-line — 

Heroes with hearts of gold, 
But of their victory a sign 

The Fates withhold; 

And the hours too tardy-footed pass, 

The voiceless hush grows dense 
'Mid the imaginings, alas! 

That feed suspense. 

Oh, might I lie on the wind, or fly 

In the wilful sea-bird's track, 
Would I hurry on, with a homesick cry — 

Or hasten bacl^? 

Florence Earle Coatee 

THE ANVIL 

Burned from the ore's rejected dross, 

The iron whitens in the heat. 

With plangent strokes of pain and loss 

The hammers on the iron beat. 

Searched by the fire, through death and dole 

We feel the iron in our soul. 

O dreadful Forge! if torn and bruised 
The heart, more urgent comes our cry 
Not to be spared but to be used, 
Brain, sinew, and spirit, before we die. 
Beat out the iron, edge it keen, 
And shape us to the end we mean! 

Laurence Binyon 



110 



REFLECTIONS 



THE FOOL RINGS HIS BELLS 

Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee; 

And thou, poor Innoeency; 

And Love — a lad with broken wing; 

And Pity, too: 

The Fool shall sing to you, 

As Fools will sing. 

Ay, music hath small sense, 

And a tune's soon told, 

And Earth is old, 

And my poor wits are dense; 

Yet have I secrets, — dark, my dear, 

To breathe you all: Come near. 

And lest some hideous listener tells, 

I'll ring my bells. 

They're all at war! 
Yes, yes, their bodies go 
'Neath burning sun and icy star 
To chaunted songs of woe, 
Dragging cold cannon through a mud 
Of rain and blood; 
The new moon glinting hard on eyes 
Wide with insanities! 

Hush! ... I use words 

I hardly know the meaning of; 

And the mute birds 

Are glancing at Love! 

From out their shade of leaf and flower, 

Trembling at treacheries 



THE FOOL RINGS HIS BELLS 111 



Which even in noonday cower, 
leed, heed not what I said 
Of frenzied hosts of men, 
More fools than I, 
On envy, hatred fed, 
Who kill, and die — 
Spake I not plainly, then? 
Yet Pity whispered, "Why?" 

Thou silly thing, of! to thy daisies go. 
Mine was not news for child to know, 
And Death — no ears hath. He hath supped 

where creep 
Eyeless worms in hush of sleep; 
Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws 
Athwart his grinning jaws 
Faintly their thin bones rattle, and . . . There, 

there; 

Hearken how my bells in the air 
Drive away care! . . . 

Nay, but a dream I had 

Of a world all mad. 

Not a simple happy mad like me, 

Who am mad like an empty scene 

Of water and willow tree, 

Where the wind hath been; 

But that foul Satan-mad, 

Who rots in his own head, 

And counts the dead, 

Not honest one — and two — 

But for the ghosts they were, 

Brave, faithful, true, 



112 



REFLECTIONS 



When, head in air, 

In Earth's clear green and blue 

Heaven they did share 

With Beauty who bade them there. . . . 

There, now ! he goes — 

Old Bones; I've wearied him. 

Ay, and the light doth dim f 

And asleep 's the rose, 

And tired Innocence 

In dreams is hence. . . • 

Come, Love, my lad, 

Nodding that drowsy head, 

'T is time thy prayers were said\ 

Walter de la Mare 

THE ROAD TO DIEPPE 

[Concerning the experiences of a journey on foot through the night of 
August 4, 1914 (the night after the formal declaration of war between 
England and Germany), from a town near Amiens, in France, to Dieppe, 
a distance of somewhat more than forty miles.] 

Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road, 
Close at my side, so silently he came 
Nor gave a sign of salutation, save 
To touch with light my sleeve and make the way 
Appear as if a shining countenance 
Had looked on it. Strange was this radiant Youth, 
As I, to these fair, fertile parts of France, 
Where Csesar with his legions once had passed, 
And where the Kaiser's Uhlans yet would pass 
Or e'er another moon should cope with clouds 
For mastery of these same fields. — To-night 
(And but a month has gone since I walked there) 



THE ROAD TO DIEPPE 113 



Well might the Kaiser write, as Caesar wrote, 

In his new Commentaries on a Gallic war, 

" Fortissimi Belgce." — A moon ago! 

"Who would have then divined that dead would lie 

Like swaths of grain beneath the harvest moon 

Upon these lands the ancient Belgse held, 

From Normandy beyond renowned Liege ! — 

But it was out of that dread August night 

From which all Europe woke to war, that we, 

This beautiful Dawn-Youth, and I, had come, 

He from afar. Beyond grim Petrograd 

He'd waked the moujik from his peaceful dreams, 

Bid the muezzin call to morning prayer 

Where minarets rise o'er the Golden Horn, 

And driven shadows from the Prussian march 

To lie beneath the lindens of the stadt. 

Softly he 'd stirred the bells to ring at Rheims, 

He 'd knocked at high Montmartre, hardly asleep r 

Heard the sweet carillon of doomed Lou vain, 

Boylike, had tarried for a moment's play 

Amid the traceries of Amiens, 

And then was hastening on the road to Dieppe, 

When he o'ertook me drowsy from the hours 

Through which I 'd walked, with no companions else 

Than ghostly kilometer posts that stood 

As sentinels of space along the way. — 

Often, in doubt, I'd paused to question one, 

With nervous hands, as they who read Moon-type; 

And more than once I'd caught a moment's sleep 

Beside the highway, in the dripping grass, 

While one of these white sentinels stood guard, 

Knowing me for a friend, who loves the road, 



114 



REFLECTIONS 



And best of all by night, when wheels do sleep 
And stars alone do walk abroad. — But once 
Three watchful shadows, deeper than the dark, 
Laid hands on me and searched me for the marks 
Of traitor or of spy, only to find 
Over my heart the badge of loyalty. — 
With wish for ban voyage they gave me o'er 
To the white guards who led me on again. 

Thus Dawn o'ertook me and with magic speech 
Made me forget the night as we strode on. 
Where'er he looked a miracle was wrought: 
A tree grew from the darkness at a glance; 
A hut was thatched; a new chateau was reared 
Of stone, as weathered as the church at Caen; 
Gray blooms were coloured suddenly in red; 
A flag was flung across the eastern sky. — 
Nearer at hand, he made me then aware 
Of peasant women bending in the fields, 
Cradling and gleaning by the first scant light, 
Their sons and husbands somewhere o'er the edge 
Of these green-golden fields which they had sowed, 
But will not reap, — out somewhere on the march, 
God but knows where and if they come again. 
One fallow field he pointed out to me 
Where but the day before a peasant ploughed, 
Dreaming of next year's fruit, and there his plough 
Stood now mid-field, his horses commandeered, 
A monstrous sable crow perched on the beam. 

Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road, 
Far from my side, so silently he went, 
Catching his golden helmet as he ran, 



FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN GREECE 115 



And hast'ning on along the dun straight way, 
Where old men's sabots now began to clack 
And withered women, knitting, led their cows, 
On, on to call the men of Kitchener 
Down to their coasts, — I shouting after him : 
" O Dawn, would you had let the world sleep on 
Till all its armament were turned to rust, 
Nor waked it to this day of hideous hate, 
Of man's red murder and of woman's woe!" 

Famished and lame, I came at last to Dieppe, 
But Dawn had made his way across the sea, 
And, as I climbed with heavy feet the cliff, 
Was even then upon the sky-built towers 
Of that great capital where nations all, 
Teuton, Italian, Gallic, English, Slav, 
Forget long hates in one consummate faith. 

John Finley 

TO FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN GREECE 
March-September, 1914 

'T was in the piping time of peace 
We trod the sacred soil of Greece, 
Nor thought, where the Ilissus runs, 
Of Teuton craft or Teuton guns; 

Nor dreamt that, ere the year was spent, 
Their iron challenge insolent 
Would round the world's horizons pour, 
From Europe to the Australian shore. 



116 



REFLECTIONS 



The tides of war had ebb'd away 
From Trachis and Thermopylae, 
Long centuries had come and gone 
Since that fierce day at Marathon; 

Freedom was firmly based, and we 
WalFd by our own encircling sea; 
The ancient passions dead, and men 
Battl'd with ledger and with pen» 

So seem'd it, but to them alone 
The wisdom of the gods is known; 
Lest freedom's price decline, from far 
Zeus hurl'd the thunderbolt of war. 

And so once more the Persian steel 
The armies of the Greeks must feel, 
And once again a Xerxes know 
The virtue of a Spartan foe. 

Thus may the cloudy fates unroll'd 
Retrace the starry circles old, 
And the recurrent heavens decree 
A Periclean dynasty. 

W. Macneile Dixon 

"WHEN THERE IS PEACE" 

"When there is Peace our land no more 

Will be the land we knew of yore." 
Thus do our facile seers foretell 
The truth that none can buy or sell 

And e'en the wisest must ignore. 



A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR 117 



When we have bled at every pore, 
Shall we still strive for gear and store? 
Will it be Heaven? Will it be Hell, 
When there is Peace? 



This let us pray for, this implore: 

That all base dreams thrust out at door, 

We may in loftier aims excel 

And, like men waking from a spell, 

Grow stronger, nobler, than before, 

When there is Peace. 

„ - M Austin Dobson 

January 1, 1916 



A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR 

[The war will change many things in art and life, and among them* 
it is to be hoped, many of our own ideas as to what is, and what is not* 
45 intellectual."] 

Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea, 
Whose footsteps are not known, 

To-night a world that turned from Thee 
Is waiting — at Thy Throne. 



The towering Babels that we raised 

Where scoffing sophists brawl, 
The little Antichrists we praised — 

The night is on them all. 

The fool hath said . . . The fool hath said . . , 
And we, who deemed him wise, 

We who believed that Thou wast dead, 
How should we seek Thine eyes? 



118 



REFLECTIONS 



How should we seek to Thee for power 

Who scorned Thee yesterday? 
How should we kneel, in this dread hour? 

Lord, teach us how to pray! 

Grant us the single heart, once more, 

That mocks no sacred thing, 
The Sword of Truth our fathers wore 

When Thou wast Lord and King. 

Let darkness unto darkness tell 

Our deep unspoken prayer, 
For, while our souls in darkness dwell, 

We know that Thou art there. 

Alfred Noyes 



THEN AND NOW 

When battles were fought 
With a chivalrous sense of should and ought, 

In spirit men said, 

"End we quick or dead, 

Honour is some reward! 
Let us fight fair — for our own best or worst; 

So, Gentlemen of the Guard, 
Fire first!" 

In the open they stood, 
Man to man in his knightlihood : / 

They would not deign 

To profit by a stain 

On the honourable rules, 
Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst 

Who in the heroic schools 
Was nurst. 



THE KAISER AND GOD 119 



But now, behold, what 
Is war with those where honour is not! 

Rama laments 

Its dead innocents; 

Herod howls: "Sly slaughter 
Rules now! Let us, by modes once called accurst, 

Overhead, under water, 
Stab first." 

Thomas Hardy 



THE KAISER AND GOD 

["I rejoice with you in Wilhelm's first victory. How magnificently God 
supported him!" — Telegram from the Kaiser to the Crown Princess,] 

Led by Wilhelm, as you tell, 
God has done extremely well; 
You with patronizing nod 
Show that you approve of God. 
Kaiser, face a question new — 
This — does God approve of you? 

Broken pledges, treaties torn, 
Your first page of war adorn; 
We on fouler things must look 
Who read further in that book, 
Where you did in time of war 
All that you in peace forswore, 
Where you, barbarously wise, 
Bade your soldiers terrorize, 

Where you made — the deed was fine — • 
Women screen your firing line. 
Villages burned down to dust, 
Torture, murder, bestial lust, 



120 



REFLECTIONS 



Filth too foul for printer's ink, 

Crime from which the apes would shrink — 

Strange the offerings that you press 

On the God of Righteousness! 

Kaiser, when you'd decorate 

Sons or friends who serve your State, 

Not that Iron Cross bestow, 

But a cross of wood, and so — 

So remind the world that you 

Have made Calvary anew. 

Kaiser, when you'd kneel in prayer 
Look upon your hands, and there 
Let that deep and awful stain 
From the blood of children slain 
Burn your very soul with shame, 
Till you dare not breathe that Name 
That now you glibly advertise — 
God as one of your allies. 

Impious braggart, you forget; 
God is not your conscript yet; 
You shall learn in dumb amaze 
That His ways are not your ways, 
That the mire through which you trod 
Is not the high white road of God. 

To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls, 
We, fighting to the end, commend our souls. 

Barry Pain 



THE SUPERMAN 



121 



THE SUPERMAN 

The horror-haunted Belgian plains riven by shot and 
shell 

Are strewn with her undaunted sons who stayed the 
jaws of hell. 

In every sunny vale of France death is the countersign. 
The purest blood in Britain's veins is being poured like 
wine. 

Far, far across the crimsoned map the impassioned 

armies sweep. 
Destruction flashes down the sky and penetrates the 

deep. 

The Dreadnought knows the silent dread, and seas 
incarnadine 

Attest the carnival of strife, the madman's battle scene. 

Relentless, savage, hot, and grim the infuriate columns 
press 

Where terror simulates disdain and danger is largess, 
Where greedy youth claims death for bride and agony 
seems bliss. 

It is the cause, the cause, my soul! which sanctifies all 
this. 

Ride, Cossacks, ride! Charge, Turcos, charge! The 

fateful hour has come. 
Let all the guns of Britain roar or be forever dumb. 
The Superman has burst his bonds. With Kultur-flag 

unfurled 

And prayer on lip he runs amuck, imperilling the 
world. 



REFLECTIONS 



The impious creed that might is right in him per- 
sonified 

Bids all creation bend before the insatiate Teuton pride, 
Which, nourished on Valhalla dreams of empire 
unconfined, 

Would make the cannon and the sword the despots of 
mankind. 

Efficient, thorough, strong, and brave — his vision is 
to kill. 

Force is the hearthstone of his might, the pole-star of 
his will. 

His forges glow malevolent: their minions never tire 
To deck the goddess of his lust whose twins are blood 
and fire. 

O world grown sick with butchery and manifold 

distress ! 

broken Belgium robbed of all save grief and ghast- 
liness ! 

Should Prussian power enslave the world and arro- 
gance prevail, 

Let chaos come, let Moloch rule, and Christ give place 
to Baal. 

Robert Grant 

THREE HELLS 

There is a hill in England, 

Green fields and a school I know, 

Where the balls fly fast in summer, 
And the whispering elm-trees grow, 

A little hill, a dear hill, 
And the playing fields below. 



THREE HILLS 



123 



There is a hill in Flanders, 

Heaped with a thousand slain, 

Where the shells fly night and noontide 
And the ghosts that died in vain, — 

A little hill, a hard hill 
To the souls that died in pain. 

There is a hill in Jewry, 

Three crosses pierce the sky, 

On the midmost He is dying 
To save all those who die, — 

A little hill, a kind hill 
To souls in jeopardy. 

Everard Owen 

Harrow, December, 1915 



INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



THE RETURN 



I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke, 
The unintelligible shock of hosts that still, 

Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again; 
And Beauty flying naked down the hill 

From morn to eve: and the stern night cried Peace! 

And shut the strife in darkness : all was still, 
Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark — 

And I heard Beauty singing up the hill. 

John Freeman 

THE MOBILIZATION IN BRITTANY 
I 

It was silent in the street. 
I did not know until a woman told me, 
Sobbing over the muslin she sold me. 
Then I went out and walked to the square 
And saw a few dazed people standing there. 

And then the drums beat, the drums beat! 
O then the drums beat! 
And hurrying, stumbling through the street 
Came the hurrying stumbling feet. 

I have heard the drums beat 
For war! 

1 have heard the townsfolk come, 

I have heard the roll and thunder of the nearest 
drum 



128 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



As the drummer stopped and cried, "Hear! 
Be strong! The summons comes! Prepare!" 
Closing he prayed us to be calm . . . 

And there was calm in my heart of the desert, of the 
dead sea, 

Of vast plains of the West before the coming storm, 
And there was calm in their eyes like the last calm that 
shall be. 

And then the drum beat, 
The fatal drum beat, 

And the drummer marched through the street 

And down to another square, 

And the drummer above took up the beat 

And sent it onward where 

Huddled, we stood and heard the drums roll, 

And then a bell began to toll. 

I have heard the thunder of drums 
Crashing into simple poor homes. 

1 have heard the drums roll "Farewell!" 
I have heard the tolling cathedral bell. 
Will it ever peal again? 

Shall I ever smile or feel again? 
What was joy? What was pain? 

For I have heard the drums beat, 

I have seen the drummer striding from street to street, 

Crying, "Be strong! Hear what I must tell!" 

While the drums roared and rolled and beat 

For war! 



MOBILIZATION IN BRITTANY 129 



II 

Last night the men of this region were leaving. Now 
they are far. 

Rough and strong they are, proud and gay they are. 
So this is the way of war . . . 

The train was full and we all shouted as it pulled away, 
They sang an old war-song, they were true to them- 
selves, they were gay! 
We might have thought they were going for a holi- 
day — 

Except for something in the air, 

Except for the weeping of the ruddy old women of 
Finistere. 

The younger women do not weep. They dream and 
stare. 

They seem to be walking in dreams. They seem not to 
know 

It is their homes, their happiness, vanishing so. 
(Every strong man between twenty and forty must go.) 

They sang an old war-song. I have heard it often in 
other days, 

But never before when War was walking the world's 
highways. 

They sang, they shouted, the Marseillaise ! 

The train went and another has gone, but none, com- 
ing, has brought word. 

Though you may know, you, out in the world, we have 
not heard, 

We are not sure that the great battalions have stirred — 1 



130 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



Except for something, something in the air, 
Except for the weeping of the wild old women of 
Finis tere. 

How long will the others dream and stare? 

The train went. The strong men of this region are all 
away, afar. 

Rough and strong they are, proud and gay they are. 
So this is the way of war . . . 

Grace Fallow Norton 

THE TOY BAND 
(A Song of the Great Retreat) 

Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town, 

Lights out and never a glint o' moon: 
Weary lay the stragglers, half a thousand down, 

Sad sighed the weary big Dragoon. 
"Oh! if I'd a drum here to make them take the road 
again, 

Oh! if I'd a fife to wheedle, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load 
again, 

Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum! 

"Hey, but here's a toy shop, here's a drum for me, 

Penny whistles too to play the tune! 
Half a thousand dead men soon shall hear and see 

We're a band!" said the weary big Dragoon. 
"Rubadub ! Rubadub ! Wake and take the road again, 

W T heedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load 
again, 

Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!" 



THOMAS OF THE LIGHT HEART 131 



Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night, 
Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat: 

Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight 
With a little penny drum to lift their feet. 

Rubadub ! Rubadub ! Wake and take the road again, 
Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come! 

You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load 
again, 

Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum! 

As long as there's an Englishman to ask a tale of me, 

As long as I can tell the tale aright, 
We'll not forget the penny whistle's wheedle-deedle- 
dee 

And the big Dragoon a-beating down the night, 
Rubadub ! Rubadub ! Wake and take the road again, 

Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come! 
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load 
again, 

Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum! 

Henry Newbolt 

THOMAS OF THE LIGHT HEART 

Facing the guns, he jokes as well 
As any Judge upon the Bench; 

Between the crash of shell and shell 

His laughter rings along the trench; 

He seems immensely tickled by a 

Projectile which he calls a "Black Maria. 5 ' 

He whistles down the day-long road, 
And, when the chilly shadows fall 



132 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



And heavier hangs the weary load, 

Is he down-hearted? Not at all. 
'T is then he takes a light and airy 
View of the tedious route to Tipperary. 

His songs are not exactly hymns; 

He never learned them in the choir; 
And yet they brace his dragging limbs 

Although they miss the sacred fire; 
Although his choice and cherished gems 
Do not include "The Watch upon the Thames. 99 

He takes to fighting as a game; 

He does no talking, through his hat, 
Of holy missions; all the same 

He has his faith — be sure of that; 
He'll not disgrace his sporting breed, 
Nor play what is n't cricket. There's his creed. 

Owen Seaman 

October, 1914 



IN THE TRENCHES 

As I lay in the trenches 
Under the Hunter's Moon, 
My mind ran to the lenches 
Cut in a Wiltshire down. 

I saw their long black shadows, 
The beeches in the lane, 
The gray church in the meadows 
And my white cottage — plain. 



IN THE TRENCHES 



133 



Thinks I, the down lies dreaming 
Under that hot moon's eye, 
Which sees the shells fly screaming 
And men and horses die. 

And what makes she, I wonder, 
Of the horror and the blood, 
And what's her luck, to sunder 
The evil from the good? 

'T was more than I could compass, 
For how was I to think 
With such infernal rumpus 
In such a blasted stink? 

But here 's a thought to tally 
With t'other. That moon sees 
A shrouded German valley 
With woods and ghostly trees. 

And maybe there's a river 
As we have got at home 
With poplar-trees aquiver 
And clots of whirling foam. 

And over there some fellow, 
A German and a foe, 
Whose gills are turning yellow 
As sure as mine are so, 

Watches that riding glory 
Apparel'd in her gold, 
And craves to hear the story 
Her frozen lips enfold. 



134 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



And if he sees as clearly 
As I do where her shrine 
Must fall, he longs as dearly, 
With heart as full as mine. 

Maurice Hewlett 

THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH 

Men of the Twenty-first 

Up by the Chalk Pit Wood, 
Weak with our wounds and our thirst, 

Wanting our sleep and our food, 
After a day and a night — 

God, shall we ever forget! 
Beaten and broke in the fight, 

But sticking it — sticking it yet. 
Trying to hold the line, 

Fainting and spent and done, 
Always the thud and the whine, 

Always the yell of the Hun! 
Northumberland, Lancaster, York, 

Durham and Somerset, 
Fighting alone, worn to the bone, 

But sticking it — sticking it yet. 

Never a message of hope! 

Never a word of cheer! 
Fronting Hill 70 ? s shell-swept slope, 

With the dull dead plain in our rear. 
Always the whine of the shell, 

Always the roar of its burst, 
Always the tortures of hell, 

As waiting and wincing we cursed 



THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH 135 



Our luck and the guns and the Boche, 

When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!" 

And I heard some one cry, "Clear the front 
for the Guards!" 
And the Guards came through. 

Our throats they were parched and hot, 

But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers! 
Irish and Welsh and Scot, 

Coldstream and Grenadiers. 
Two brigades, if you please, 

Dressing as straight as a hem, 
We — we were down on our knees, 

Praying for us and for them! 
Lord, I could speak for a week, 

But how could you understand! 
How should your cheeks be wet, 

Such feelin's don't come to you. 
But when can me or my mates forget 5 

When the Guards came through? 

"Five yards left extend!" 

It passed from rank to rank. 
Line after line with never a bend, 

And a touch of the London swank. 
A trifle of swank and dash, 

Cool as a home parade, 
Twinkle and glitter and flash, 

Flinching never a shade, 
With the shrapnel right in their face 

Doing their Hyde Park stunt, 
Keeping their swing at an easy pace, 

Arms at the trail, eyes front! 



136 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



Man, it was great to see! 

Man, it was fine to do! 
It's a cot and a hospital ward for me, 
But I '11 tell 'em in Blighty, wherever I be, 

How the Guards came through. 

Arthur Conan Doyle 

THE PASSENGERS OF A RETARDED 
SUBMERSIBLE 
November, 1916 

The American People: 
What was it kept you so long, brave German sub- 
mersible? 

We have been very anxious lest matters had not gone 
well 

With you and the precious cargo of your country's 

drugs and dyes. 
But here you are at last, and the sight is good for our 

eyes, 

Glad to welcome you up and out of the caves of the 
sea, 

And ready for sale or barter, whatever your will may 
be. 

The Captain of the Submersible: 
Oh, do not be impatient, good friends of this neutral 
land, 

That we have been so tardy in reaching your eager 
strand. 

We were stopped by a curious chance just off the 
Irish coast, 



PASSENGERS OF A SUBMERSIBLE 137 



Where the mightiest wreck ever was lay crowded with 
a host 

Of the dead that went down with her; and some prayed 

us to bring them here 
That they might be at home with their brothers and 

sisters dear. 

We Germans have tender hearts, and it grieved us sore 
to say 

We were not a passenger ship, and to most we must 
answer nay, 

But if from among their hundreds they could somehow 

a half-score choose 
We thought we could manage to bring them, and we 

would not refuse. 
They chose, and the women and children that are 

greeting you here are those 
Ghosts of the women and children that the rest of the 

hundred chose. 

The American People: 
What guS are you giving us, Captain? We are able 

to tell, we hope, 
A dozen ghosts, when we see them, apart from a 

periscope. 

Come, come, get down to business! For time is money, 
you know, 

And you must make up in both to us for having been 
so slow. 

Better tell this story of yours to the submarines, for 
we 

Know there was no such wreck, and none of your 
spookery. 



138 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



The Ghosts of the Lusitania Women and 

Children: 

Oh, kind kin of our murderers, take us back when you 
sail away; 

Our own kin have forgotten us. Captain, do not 
stay! 

But hasten, Captain, hasten: The wreck that lies 

under the sea 
Shall be ever the home for us this land can never be. 

William Dean Howells 

EDITH CAVELL 

She was binding the wounds of her enemies when 

they came — 
The lint in her hand unrolled. 
They battered the door with their rifle-butts, crashed 

it in: 

She faced them gentle and bold. 

They haled her before the judges where they sat 

In their places, helmet on head. 
With question and menace the judges assailed her, 
"Yes, 

I have broken your law," she said. 

"I have tended the hurt and hidden the hunted, have 
done 

As a sister does to a brother, 
Because of a law that is greater than that you have 
made, 

Because I could do none other. 



EDITH CAVELL 



139 



"Deal as you will with me, This is my choice to the 
end, 

To live in the life I vowed." 
"She is self-confessed," they cried; "she is self-con- 
demned. 

She shall die, that the rest may be cowed." 

In the terrible hour of the dawn, when the veins are 
cold, 

They led her forth to the wall. 
"I have loved my land," she said, "but it is not 
enough : 
Love requires of me all. 

"I will empty my heart of the bitterness, hating none." 

And sweetness filled her brave 
With a vision of understanding beyond the hour 

That knelled to the waiting grave. 

They bound her eyes, but she stood as if she shone. 

The rifles it was that shook 
When the hoarse command rang out. They could not 
endure 

That last, that defenceless look. 

And the officer strode and pistolled her surely, 
ashamed 

That men, seasoned in blood, 
Should quail at a woman, only a woman, — 

As a flower stamped in the mud. 

And now that the deed was securely done, in the 
night 

When none had known her fate, 



140 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



They answered those that had striven for her, day by 

day: 

"It is over, you come too late." 

And with many words and sorrowful-phrased excuse 

Argued their German right 
To kill, most legally; hard though the duty be, 

The law must assert its might. 

Only a woman! yet she had pity on them, 

The victim offered slain 
To the gods of fear that they worship. Leave them 
there, 

Red hands, to clutch their gain! 

She bewailed not herself, and we will bewail her not, 

But with tears of pride rejoice 
That an English soul was found so crystal-clear 

To be triumphant voice 

Of the human heart that dares adventure all 

But live to itself untrue, 
And beyond all laws sees love as the light in the night. 

As the star it must answer to. 

The hurts she healed, the thousands comforted — 
these 

Make a fragrance of her fame. 
But because she stept to her star right on through 
death 

It is Victory speaks her name. 

Laurence Binyon 



THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS 141 



THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS 

My name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? Out, 

Comedie Frangaise. 
Perchance it has happened, mon ami, you know of my 

unworthy lays. 
Ah, then you must guess how my fingers are itching to 

talk to a pen; 
For I was at Soissons, and saw it, the death of the 

twelve Englishmen. 

My leg, malheureusement, I left it behind on the banks 
of the Aisne. 

Regret? I would pay with the other to witness their 
valor again. 

A trifle, indeed, I assure you, to give for the honor to 
teU 

How that handful of British, undaunted, went into 
the Gateway of Hell. 

Let me draw you a plan of the battle. Here we French 
and your Engineers stood; 

Over there a detachment of German sharpshooters lay 
hid in a wood. 

A mitrailleuse battery planted on top of this well- 
chosen ridge 

Held the road for the Prussians and covered the direct 
approach to the bridge. 

It was madness to dare the dense murder that spewed 

from those ghastly machines. 
(Only those who have danced to its music can know 
what the mitrailleuse means.) 



142 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



But the bridge on the Aisne was a menace: our safety 

demanded its fall: 
"Engineers, — volunteers!" In a body, the Royals 

stood out at the call. 

Death at best was the fate of that mission — to their 

glory not one was dismayed. 
A party was chosen — and seven survived till the 

powder was laid. 
And they died with their fuses unlighted. Another 

detachment! Again 
A sortie is made — all too vainly. The bridge still 

commanded the Aisne. 

We were fighting two foes — Time and Prussia — the 
moments were worth more than troops. 

We must blow up the bridge. A lone soldier darts out 
from the Royals and swoops 

For the fuse! Fate seems with us. We cheer him; he 
answers — our hopes are reborn! 

A ball rips his visor — his khaki shows red where an- 
other has torn. 

Will he live — will he last — will he make it? Helas! 

And so near to the goal! 
A second, he dies! then a third one! A fourth! Still 

the Germans take toll! 
A fifth, magnifique! It is magic! How does he escape 

them? He may . . . 
Yes, he does ! See, the match flares ! A rifle rings out 

from the wood and says "Nay!" 



THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS 143 



Six, seven, eight, nine take their places, six, seven, 

eight, nine brave their hail; 
Six, seven, eight, nine — how we count them! But 

the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth fail! 
A tenth! Sacre nom I But these English are soldiers — ■ 

they know how to try; 
(He fumbles the place where his jaw was) — they 

show, too, how heroes can die. 

Ten we count — ten who ventured unquailing — ten 
there were — and ten are no more ! 

Yet another salutes and superbly essays where the ten 
failed before. 

God of Battles, look down and protect him! Lord, his 

heart is as Thine — let him live ! 
But the mitrailleuse splutters and stutters, and riddles 

him into a sieve. 

Then I thought of my sins, and sat waiting the charge 

that we could not withstand. 
And I thought of my beautiful Paris, and gave a last 

look at the land, 
At France, my belle France, in her glory of blue sky 

and green field and wood. 
Death with honor, but never surrender. And to die 

with such men — it was good. 

They are forming — the bugles are blaring — they 
will cross in a moment and then . . . 

When out of the line of the Royals (your island, mon 
ami, breeds men) 



144 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



Burst a private, a tawny-haired giant — it was hope- 
less, but, del ! how he ran! 

Bon Dieu please remember the pattern, and mak( 
many more on his plan! 

No cheers from our ranks, and the Germans, they 
halted in wonderment too; 

See, he reaches the bridge; ah! he lights it! I am dream- 
ing, it cannot be true. 

Screams of rage ! Fusillade! They have killed him! 
Too late though, the good work is done. 

By the valor of twelve English martyrs, the Hell- 
Gate of Soissons is won! 

Herbert Kaufman 

THE VIRGIN OF ALBERT 

• (Notre Dame de Brebieres) 

Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her, 

They linger, Gaul and Briton, side by side: 
Death they know well, for daily have they died, 

Spending their boyhood ever bravelier; 

They wait: here is no priest or chorister, 
Birds skirt the stricken tower, terrified; 
Desolate, empty, is the Eastertide, 

Yet still they wait, watching the Babe and Her. 

Broken, the Mother stoops: the brutish foe 

Hurled with dull hate his bolts, and down She swayed; 

Down, till She saw the toiling swarms below, — 
Platoons, guns, transports, endlessly arrayed: 

"Women are woe for them! let Me be theirs, 

And comfort them, and hearken all their prayers !" 

GeGrge Herbert Clarke 



A LETTER FROM THE FRONT 145 



RETREAT 

Broken, bewildered by the long retreat 

Across the stifling leagues of southern plain, 
Across the scorching leagues of trampled grain, 

Half-stunned, half-blinded, by the trudge of feet 

And dusty smother of the August heat, 
He dreamt of flowers in an English lane, 
Of hedgerow flowers glistening after rain — 

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet. 

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet — 
The innocent names kept up a cool refrain — 

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet, 
Chiming and tinkling in his aching brain, 
Until he babbled like a child again — 

"All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet." 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 

A LETTER FROM THE FRONT 

I was out early to-day, spying about 

From the top of a haystack — such a lovely morning — 

And when I mounted again to canter back 

I saw across a field in the broad sunlight 

A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along 

With a rook-rifle held at the ready, and — would you 

believe it? — 
A domestic cat, soberly marching beside him. 

So I laughed, and felt quite well disposed to the 
youngster, 

And shouted out "the top of the morning" to him, 



146 INCIDENTS AND ASPECTS 



And wished him "Good sport!" — and then I re- 
membered 

My rank, and his, and what I ought to be doing : 
And I rode nearer, and added, "I can only suppose 
You have not seen the Commander-in-Chief's order 
Forbidding English officers to annoy their Allies 
By hunting and shooting." 

But he stood and saluted 
And said earnestly, "I beg your pardon, Sir, 
I was only going out to shoot a sparrow 
To feed my cat with." 

So there was the whole picture, 
The lovely early morning, the occasional shell 
Screeching and scattering past us, the empty land- 
scape, — 

Empty, except for the young Gunner saluting, 

And the cat, anxiously watching his every movement. 

I may be wrong, and I may have told it badly, 
But it struck me as being extremely ludicrous. 

Henry Newbolt 

RHEIMS CATHEDRAL — 1914 

A winged death has smitten dumb thy bells, 

And poured them molten from thy tragic towers : 
Now are the windows dust that were thy flower. 5. 

Patterned like frost, petalled like asphodels. 

Gone are the angels and the archangels, 

The saints, the little lamb above thy/loor, 
The shepherd Christ! They are not, any more, 

Save in the soul where exiled beauty dwells. 



RHEIMS CATHEDRAL— 1914 147 



But who has heard within thy vaulted gloom 
That old divine insistence of the sea, 

When music flows along the sculptured stone 
In tides of prayer, for him thy windows bloom 
Like faithful sunset, warm immortally! 

Thy bells live on, and Heaven is in their tone! 

Grace Hazard Conkling 



POETS MILITANT 



(The authors of the poems included in 
this section are or were on active service.) 



I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH. 



I have a rendezvous with Death 
At some disputed barricade, 
When Spring comes back with rustling shade 
And apple-blossoms fill the air — 
I have a rendezvous with Death 
When Spring brings back blue days and fair. 

It may be he shall take my hand 
And lead me into his dark land 
And close my eyes and quench my breath — 
It may be I shall pass him still. 
I have a rendezvous with Death 
On some scarred slope of battered hill, 
When Spring comes round again this year 
And the first meadow-flowers appear. 

God knows 't were better to be deep 
Pillowed in silk and scented down, 
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep 
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, 
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . 
But I've a rendezvous with Death 
At midnight in some flaming town, 
When Spring trips north again this year, 
And I to my pledged word am true, 
I shall not fail that rendezvous. 

Alan Seeger 



152 



POETS MILITANT 



THE SOLDIER 

If I should die, think only this of me : 

That there 's some corner of a foreign field 
That is for ever England. There shall be 

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 

And think this heart, all evil shed away, 
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England 
given; 

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, 
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 

Rupert Brooke 



EXPECT AN S EXPECTAVI 

From morn to midnight, all day through, 
I laugh and play as others do, 
I sin and chatter, just the same 
As others with a different name. 

And all year long upon the stage, 
I dance and tumble and do rage 
So vehemently, I scarcely see 
The inner and eternal me. 

I have a temple I do not 
Visit, a heart I have forgot, 



THE VOLUNTEER 



153 



A self that I have never met, 

A secret shrine — and yet, and yet 

This sanctuary of my soul 
Unwitting I keep white and whole, 
Unlatched and lit, if Thou should'st care 
To enter or to tarry there. 

With parted lips and outstretched hands 
And listening ears Thy servant stands, 
Call Thou early, call Thou late, 
To Thy great service dedicate. 

Charles Hamilton Sorley 

May, 1915 

THE VOLUNTEER 

Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent 
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, 
Thinking that so his days would drift away 
With no lance broken in life's tournament: 
Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes 
The gleaming eagles of the legions came, 
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, 
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme. 

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied; 
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went; 
His lance is broken; but he lies content 
With that high hour, in which he lived and died. 
And falling thus he wants no recompense, 
Who found his battle in the last resort; 
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence, 
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt. 

Herbert Asquith 



154 



POETS MILITANT 



INTO BATTLE 

The naked earth is warm with Spring, 

And with green grass and bursting trees 
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, 

And quivers in the sunny breeze; 
And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light, 

And a striving evermore for these; 
And he is dead who will not fight; 

And who dies fighting has increase. 

The fighting man shall from the sun 

Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; 
Speed with the light-foot winds to run, 

And with the trees to newer birth; 
And find, when fighting shall be done, 

Great rest, and fullness after dearth. 

All the bright company of Heaven 
Hold him in their high comradeship, 

The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven, 
Orion's Belt and sworded hip. 

The woodland trees that stand together, 
They stand to him each one a friend; 

They gently speak in the windy weather; 
They guide to valley and ridges' end. 

The kestrel hovering by day, 

And the little owls that call by night, 

Bid him be swift and keen as they, 
As keen of ear, as swift of sight. 



THE CRICKETERS OF FLANDERS 155 



The blackbird sings to him, ''Brother, brother, 
If this be the last song you shall sing, 

Sing well, for you may not sing another; 
Brother, sing." 

In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours, 

Before the brazen frenzy starts, 
The horses show him nobler powers; 

O patient eyes, courageous hearts ! 

And when the burning moment breaks, 
And all things else are out of mind, 

And only Joy-of-Battle takes 

Him by the throat, and makes him blind, 

Through joy and blindness he shall know, 
Not caring much to know, that still 

Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so 
That it be not the Destined Will. 

The thundering line of battle stands, 
And in the air Death moans and sings; 

But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, 
And Night shall fold him in soft wings. 

Julian Grenfcll 

Flanders, April, 1915 

THE CRICKETERS OF FLANDERS 

The first to climb the parapet 
With "cricket balls" in either hand; 
The first to vanish in the smoke 
Of God-forsaken No Man's Land; 



156 POETS MILITANT 



First at the wire and soonest through, 
First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell, 
The Maxims, and the first to fall, — 
They do their bit and do it well. 

Full sixty yards I've seen them throw 
With all that nicety of aim 
They learned on British cricket-fields. 
Ah, bombing is a Briton's game! 
Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench, 
"Lobbing them over" with an eye 
As true as though it were a game 
And friends were having tea close by. 

Pull down some art-offending thing 
Of carven stone, and in its stead 
Let splendid bronze commemorate 
These men, the living and the dead. 
No figure of heroic size, 
Towering skyward like a god; 
But just a lad who might have stepped 
From any British bombing squad. 

His shrapnel helmet set atilt, 

His bombing waistcoat sagging low, 

His rifle slung across his back: 

Poised in the very act to throw. 

And let some graven legend tell 

Of those weird battles in the West 

Wherein he put old skill to use, 

And played old games with sterner zest. 

Thus should he stand, reminding those 
In less-believing days, perchance, 



Al^L THE HILLS AND VALES 157 



How Britain's fighting cricketers 
Helped bomb the Germans out of France. 
And other eyes than ours would see; 
And other hearts than ours would thrill; 
And others say, as we have said: 
"A sportsman and a soldier still!" 

I James Norman Hall 

ALL THE HILLS AND VALES ALONG" 

All the hills and vales along 
Earth is bursting into song, 
And the singers are the chaps 
Who are going to die perhaps. 

O sing, marching men, 

Till the valleys ring again. 

Give your gladness to earth's keeping, 

So be glad, when you are sleeping. 

Cast away regret and rue, 
Think what you are marching to. 
Little live, great pass. 
Jesus Christ and Bar abbas 
Were found the same day. 
This died, that went his way. 

So sing with joyful breath. 

For why, you are going to death. 

Teeming earth will surely store 

All the gladness that you pour. 

Earth that never doubts nor fears, 
Earth that knows of death, not tears, 



158 



POETS MILITANT 



Earth that bore with joyful ease 
Hemlock for Socrates, 
Earth that blossomed and was glad 
'Neath the cross that Christ had, 
Shall rejoice and blossom too 
When the bullet reaches you. 

Wherefore, men marching 

On the road to death, sing! 

Pour your gladness on earth's head, 

So be merry, so be dead. 

From the hills and valleys earth 

Shouts back the sound of mirth, 

Tramp of feet and lilt of song 

Ringing all the road along. 

All the music of their going, 

Ringing, swinging, glad song-throwing, 

Earth will echo still, when foot 

Lies numb and voice mute. 
On, marching men, on 
To the gates of death with song. 
Sow your gladness for earth's reaping, 
So you may be glad, though sleeping. 
Strew your gladness on earth's bed, 
So be merry, so be dead. 

Charles Hamilton Sorley 

NO MAN'S LAND 

No Man's Land is an eerie sight 
At early dawn in the pale gray light. 
Never a house and never a hedge 
In No Man's Land from edge to edge, 



NO MAN'S LAND m 



And never a living soul walks there 
To taste the fresh of the morning air; — 
Only some lumps of rotting clay, 
That were friends or foemen yesterday. 

What are the bounds of No Man's Land? 
You can see them clearly on either hand, 
A mound of rag-bags gray in the sun, 
Or a furrow of brown where the earthworks run 
From the eastern hills to the western sea, 
Through field or forest o'er river and lea; 
No man may pass them, but aim you well 
And Death rides across on the bullet or shell. 

But No Man's Land is a goblin sight 
When patrols crawl over at dead o' night; 
Boche or British, Belgian or French, 
You dice with death when you cross the trench. 
When the "rapid," like fireflies in the dark, 
Flits down the parapet spark by spark, 
And you drop for cover to keep your head 
With your face on the breast of the four months' 
dead. 

The man who ranges in No Man's Land 
Is dogged by the shadows on either hand 
When the star-shell's flare, as it bursts o'erhead, 
Scares the gray rats that feed on the dead, 
And the bursting bomb or the bayonet-snatch 
May answer the click of your safety-catch, 
For the lone patrol, with his life in his hand, 
Is hunting for blood in No Man's Land. 

James H. KnighUAdkin 



150 



POETS MILITANT 



CHAMPAGNE, 1914-15 

In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, 

When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearlec 
With the sweet wine of France that concentrates 

The sunshine and the beauty of the world, 

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread 
The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, 

To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, 

Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth. 

Here, by devoted comrades laid away, 

Along our lines they slumber where they fell, 

Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger 
And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle, 

And round the city whose cathedral towers 
The enemies of Beauty dared profane, 

And in the mat of multicolored flowers 

That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne, 

Under the little crosses where they rise 

The soldier rests. Xow round him undismayed 

The cannon thunders, and at night he lies 
At peace beneath the eternal fusillade . . . 

That other generations might possess — 

From shame and menace free in years to come — ■ 

A richer heritage of happiness, 

He marched to that heroic martyrdom. 

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid 

Than undishonored that his flag might float 



CHAMPAGNE, 1914-15 161 



Over the towers of liberty, he made 

His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat. 

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, 
Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, 

Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, 
And Autumn yellow with maturing vines. 

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting 

Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, 

Blessing his memory as they toil and sing 
In the slant sunshine of October days . . . 

I love to think that if my blood should be 
So privileged to sink where his has sunk, 

I shall not pass from Earth entirely, 

But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk. 

And faces that the joys of living fill 

Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, 

In beaming cups some spark of me shall still 
Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear. 

So shall one coveting no higher plane 

Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone, 
Even from the grave put upward to attain 

The dreams youth cherished and missed and might 
have known; 

And that strong need that strove unsatisfied 
Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore, 

Not death itself shall utterly divide 

From the beloved shapes it thirsted for. 



162 POETS MILITANT 



Alas, how many an adept for whose arms - 
Life held delicious offerings perished here, 

How many in the prime of all that charms, 

Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear ! 

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, 
But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, 

Where in the anguish of atrocious hours 

Turned their last thoughts and closed their 
dying eyes, 

Rather when music on bright gatherings lays 
Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost, 

Be mindful of the men they were, and raise 
Your glasses to them in one silent toast. 

Drink to them — amorous of dear Earth as well, 
They asked no tribute lovelier than this — 

And in the wine that ripened where they fell, 
Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss. 

Alan Seeger 

Champagne, France, 
July, 1915 

HEADQUARTERS 

A league and a league from the trenches — from the 

traversed maze of the lines, 
Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the 

bullet whines, 
And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and 

with countermines — 



HEADQUARTERS 



1G3 



Here, where haply some woman dreamed, (are those 

her roses that bloom 
In the garden beyond the windows of my littered 

working-room?) 
We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is 

decked for the groom. 

Fair, on each lettered numbered square — crossroad 

and mound and wire, 
Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement — lie the targets 

their mouths desire; 
Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we 

traced them their arcs of fire. 

Xnd ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keen 
wires bring 

Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from 

the watchers a-wing: 
And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns 

thundering. 

Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the 

trench lines crawl, 
Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging 

shrapnel's fall — 
Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is 

written here on the wall. 

For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close. . . « 

There is scarcely a leaf astir 
tn the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight 

shadows blur 
The blaze of some woman's roses. . . . 

" Bombardment orders, sir." 
Gilbert Frankau 



164 POETS MILITANT 



HOME THOUGHTS FROM LAVENTIE 

Green gardens in Laventie! 

Soldiers only know the street 

Where the mud is churned and splashed about 

By battle-wending feet; 
And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse 
of grass — 

Look for it when you pass. 

Beyond the church whose pitted spire 

Seems balanced on a strand 

Of swaying stone and tottering brick, 

Two roofless ruins stand; 
And here, among the wreckage, where the back-wall 
should have been, 

We found a garden green. 

The grass was never trodden on, 

The little path of gravel 

Was overgrown with celandine; 

No other folk did travel 
Along its weedy surface but the nimble-footed mouse? 

Running from house to house. 

So all along the tender blades 

Of soft and vivid grass 

We lay, nor heard the limber wheels 

That pass and ever pass 
In noisy continuity until their stony rattle 

Seems in itself a battle. 



THOUGHTS FROM LAVENTIE 165 



At length we rose up from this ease 

Of tranquil happy mind, 

And searched the garden's little length 

Some new pleasaunce to find; 
And there some yellow daffodils, and jasmine hanging 
high, 

Did rest the tired eye. 

The fairest and most fragrant 
Of the many sweets we found 
Was a little bush of Daphne flower 

Upon a mossy mound, 
And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the 
scent, 

That w e were well content. 

Hungry for Spring I bent my head, 
The perfume fanned my face, 
And all my soul was dancing 

In that lovely little place, 
Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and 
shattered towns 

Away . . . upon the Downs. 

I saw green banks of daffodil, 

Slim poplars in the breeze, 

Great tan-brown hares in gusty March 

A-courting on the leas. 
And meadows, with their glittering streams — and 
silver-scurrying dace — ■ 
Home, what a perfect place! 

£. Wyndham Tennant 



166 POETS MILITANT 



A PETITION 

All that a man might ask thou hast given me, 
England, 

Birthright and happy childhood's long heart's-ease. 
And love whose range is deep beyond all sounding 

And wider than all seas: 
A heart to front the world and find God in it, 

Eyes blind enow but not too blind to see 
The lovely things behind the dross and darkness, 

And lovelier things to be; 
And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weaken 

And quenchless hope and laughter's golden store — 
All that a man might ask thou hast given mv 9 
England, 

Yet grant thou one thing more : 
That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendour, 

Unversed in arms, a dreamer such as I, 
May in thy ranks be deemed not all unworthy, 

England, for thee to die. 

Robert Ernest Vernede 

FULFILMENT 

Was there love once? I have forgotten her. 
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine. 
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir 
More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine. 

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth, 
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun; 
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth, 
As whose children we are brethren: one. 



THE DAY'S MARCH 



And any moment may descend hot death 
To shatter limbs! Pulp, tear, blast 
Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath 
Xot less for dying faithful to the last. 

O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony, 
Oped mouth gushing, fallen head, 
Lessening pressure of a hand, shrunk, clammed and 
stony! 

O sudden spasm, release of the dead! 

Was there love once? I have forgotten her. 
"Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine. 
O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier, 
All, all my joy, my grief, my love, are thine. 

Robert Nichols 

THE DAY'S MARCH 

The battery grides and jingles, 
Mile succeeds to mile; 
Shaking the noonday sunshine 
The guns lunge out awhile, 
And then are still awhile. 

We amble along the highway; 
The reeking, powdery dust 
Ascends and cakes our faces 
With a striped, sweaty crust, 

Under the still sky's violet 
The heat throbs on the air . . . 
The white road's dusty radiance 
Assumes a dark glare. 



168 



POETS MILITANT 



With a head hot and heavy, 
And eyes that cannot rest, 
And a black heart burning 
In a stifled breast, 

I sit in the saddle, 

I feel the road unroll, 

And keep my senses straightened 

Toward to-morrow's goal. 

There, over unknown meadows 
Which we must reach at last, 
Day and night thunders 
A black and chilly blast. 

Heads forget heaviness, 
Hearts forget spleen, 
For by that mighty winnowing 
Being is blown clean. 

Light in the eyes again, 
Strength in the hand, 
A spirit dares, dies, forgives, 
And can understand! 

And, best! Love comes back again 
After grief and shame, 
And along the wind of death 
Throws a clean flame. 



The battery grides and jingles, 
Mile succeeds to mile; 



THE SIGN 



169 



Suddenly battering the silence 
The guns burst out awhile . . . 

I lift my head and smile. 

Robert Nichols 

THE SIGN 

We are here in a wood of little beeches: 
And the leaves are like black lace 
Against a sky of nacre. 

One bough of clear promise 
Across the moon. 

It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me. 
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh, 
Stilling it in an eternal peace, 
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite 

hands 
Toward him, 

And is eased of its hunger. 

And I know that this passes : 

This implacable fury and torment of men, 

As a thing insensate and vain: 

And the stillness hath said unto me, 

Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame, 

Out of the terrible beauty of wrath, 

I alone am eternal. 

One bough of clear promise 
Across the moon. 

Frederic Manning 



170 



POETS MILITANT 



THE TRENCHES 

Endless lanes sunken in the clay, 

Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage, 

Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms; 

And the sky, seen as from a well, 

Brilliant with frosty stars. 

We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards. 
Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath, 
A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal 
fear, 

Implacable and monotonous. 

Here a shaft, slanting, and below 

A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle 

And prone figures sleeping uneasily, 

Murmuring, 

And men who cannot sleep, 
With faces impassive as masks, 
Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips, 
Sad, pitiless, terrible faces, 
Each an incarnate curse. 

Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry 

Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep, 

And he sees before him 

With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land 
Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid, 
As tho' they had not been men. 

Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang, 
The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life, 

Eyes that have laughed to eyes, 



SONNETS 



171 



And these were begotten, 
O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt 
With the lust of a man's first strength : ere they were 
rent, 

Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn 
In bloody fragments, to be the carrion 
Of rats and crows. 

And the sentry moves not, searching 
Night for menace with weary eyes. 

Frederic Manning 

SONNETS 
I 

I see across the chasm of flying years 
The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore; 
I see Medea's fury and hear the roar 

Of rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears; 

And ever as still another vision peers 

Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and more, 
I say that surely I have lived before 

And known this joy and trembled with these fears. 

The passion that they show me burns so high; 

Their love, in me who have not looked on love, 
So fiercely flames; so wildly comes the cry 

Of stricken women the warrior's call above, 
That I would gladly lay me down and die 

To wake again where Helen and Hector move. 



172 POETS MILITANT 



n 

The falling rain is music overhead, 

The dark night, lit by no intruding star, 

Fit covering yields to thoughts that roam afar 

And turn again familiar paths to tread, 

Where many a laden hour too quickly sped 
In happier times, before the dawn of war, 
Before the spoiler had whet his sword to mar 

The faithful living and the mighty dead. 

It is not that my soul is weighed with woe, 
But rather wonder, seeing they do but sleep. 
As birds that in the sinking summer sweep 

Across the heaven to happier climes to go, 

So they are gone; and sometimes we must weep, 

And sometimes, smiling, murmur, "Be it so!" 

Henry William Hutchinson 



THE MESSINES ROAD 
I 

The road that runs up to Messines 

Is double-locked with gates of fire, 

Barred with high ramparts, and between 
The unbridged river, and the wire. 

None ever goes up to Messines, 

For Death lurks all about the town, 

Death holds the vale as his demesne, 

And only Death moves up and down. 



THE MESSINES ROAD 173 



II 

Choked with wild weeds, and overgrown 
With rank grass, all torn and rent 

By war's opposing engines, strewn 

With debris from eaeh day's event! 

And in the dark the broken trees, 

Whose arching boughs were once its shade, 
Grim and distorted, ghostly ease 

In groans their souls vexed and afraid. 

Yet here the farmer drove his cart, 

Here friendly folk would meet and pass, 

Here bore the good wife eggs to mart 

And old and young walked up to Mass. 

Here schoolboys lingered in the way, 

Here the bent packman laboured by, 

And lovers at the end o' the day 

Whispered their secret blushingly. 

A goodly road for simple needs, 

An avenue to praise and paint, 
Kept by fair use from wreck and weeds, 

Blessed by the shrine of its own saint. 

Ill 

The road that runs up to Messines! 

Ah, how we guard it day and night ! 
And how they guard it, who o'erween 

A stricken people, with their might! 



174 POETS MILITANT 



But we shall go up to Messines 

Even thro' that fire-defended gate. 

Over and thro' all else between 

And give the highway back its state. 

J. E. Stewart 

THE CHALLENGE OF THE GUNS 

By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings, 
And that reverberating roar its challenge flings. 
Not only unto thee across the narrow sea, 
But from the loneliest vale in the last land's heart 
The sad-eyed watching mother sees her sons depart. 

And freighted full the tumbling waters of ocean are 
With aid for England from England's sons afar. 
The glass is dim; we see not wisely, far, nor well, 
But bred of English bone, and reared on Freedom's 
wine, 

All that we have and are we lay on England's shrine. 

A. N. Field 



THE BEACH ROAD BY THE WOOD 

I know a beach road, 

A road where I would go, 

It runs up northward 

From Cooden Bay to Hoe; 

And there, in the High Woods, 
Daffodils grow. 

And whoever walks along there 
Stops short and sees, 



BEACH ROAD BY THE WOOD 175 



By the moist tree-roots 

In a clearing of the trees, 
Yellow great battalions of them, 

Blowing in the breeze. 

While the spring sun brightens, 

And the dull sky clears, 
They blow their golden trumpets, 

Those golden trumpeteers! 
They blow their golden trumpets 

And they shake their glancing spears. 

And all the rocking beech-trees 
Are bright with buds again, 

And the green and open spaces 
Are greener after ram, 

And far to southward one can hear 
The sullen, moaning rain. 

Once before I die 

I will leave the town behind. 
The loud town, the dark town 

That cramps and chills the mind, 
And I'D stand again bareheaded there 

In the sunlight and the wind. 

Yes, I shall stand 

Where as a boy I stood 
Above the dykes and levels 

In the beach road by the wood, 
And I'll smell again the sea breeze, 

Salt and harsh and good. 



176 



POETS MILITANT 



And there shall rise to me 

From that consecrated ground 
The old dreams, the lost dreams 

That years and cares have drowned: 
Welling up within me 

And above me and around 
The song that I could never sing 

And the face I never found. 

Geoffrey Howard 



GERMAN PRISONERS 

When first I saw you in the curious street 

Like some platoon of soldier ghosts in grey, 

My mad impulse was all to smite and slay, 

To spit upon you — tread you 'neath my feet. 

But when I saw how each sad soul did greet 

My gaze with no sign of defiant frown, 

LIow from tired eyes looked spirits broken down, 

How each face showed the pale flag of defeat, 

And doubt, despair, and disillusionment, 

And how were grievous wounds on many a head, 

And on your garb red-faced was other red; 

And how you stooped as men whose strength was spent, 

I knew that we had suffered each as other, 

And could have grasped your hand and cried, "My 

brother!" _ _ _ 

Joseph Lee 



-BUT A SHORT TIME TO LIVE' 

Our little hour, — how swift it flies 
When poppies flare and lilies smile; 

How soon the fleeting minute dies, 
Leaving us but a little while 



— BUT A SHORT TIME TO LIVE 177 



To dream our dream, to sing our song, 
To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower, 

The Gods — They do not give us long, — 
One little hour. 

Our little hour, — how short it is 

When Love with dew-eyed loveliness 
Raises her lips for ours to kiss 

And dies within our first caress. 
Youth flickers out like wind-blown flame, 

Sweets of to-day to-morrow sour, 
For Time and Death, relentless, claim 

Our little hour. 

Our little hour, — how short a time 

To wage our wars, to fan our hates, 
To take our fill of armoured crime, 

To troop our banners, storm the gates. 
Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red, 

Blind in our puny reign of power, 
Do we forget how soon is sped 

Our little hour? 

Our little hour, — how soon it dies : 

How short a time to tell our beads, 
To chant our feeble Litanies, 

To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds. 
The altar lights grow pale and dim, 

The bells hang silent in the tower — 
So passes with the dying hymn 

Our little hour. 

Leslie Coulson 



POETS MILITANT 



BEFORE ACTION 

By all the glories of the day, 
And the cool evening's benison: 
By the last sunset touch that lay 
Upon the hills when day was done s 
By beauty lavishly outpoured, 
And blessings carelessly received, 
By all the days that I have lived. 
Make me a soldier, Lord. 

By all of all men's hopes and fears, 
And all the wonders poets sing, 
The laughter of unclouded years, 
And every sad and lovely thing: 
By the romantic ages stored 
With high endeavour that was his, 
By all his mad catastrophes, 
Make me a man, O Lord. 

I, that on my familiar hill 
Saw with uncomprehending eyes 
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill 
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, 
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword 
Must say good-bye to all of this: — 
By all delights that I shall miss, 
Help me to die, O Lord. 

William Noel Hodgson 
(" Edward Melbourne") 



OPTIMISM 



179 



COURAGE 

Alone amid the battle-din untouched 

Stands out one figure beautiful, serene; 
No grime of smoke nor reeking blood hath smutched 

The virgin brow of this unconquered queen. 
She is the Joy of Courage vanquishing 

The unstilled tremors of the fearful heart; 
And it is she that bids the poet sing, 

And gives to each the strength to bear his part. 

Her eye shall not be dimmed, but as a flame 
Shall light the distant ages with its fire, 

That men may know the glory of her name. 
That purified our souls of fear's desire. 

And she doth calm our sorrow, soothe our pain, 

And she shall lead us back to peace again. 

Dyneley Hussey 

OPTIMISM 

At last there'll dawn the last of the long year, 

Of the long year that seemed to dream no end, 

Whose every dawn but turned the world more drear, 

And slew some hope, or led away some friend. 

Or be you dark, or buffeting, or blind, 

We care not, day, but leave not death behind. 

The hours that feed on war go heavy-hearted, 
Death is no fare wherewith to make hearts fain. 
Oh, we are sick to find that they who started 
With glamour in their eyes came not again. 



180 POETS MILITANT 



O day, be long and heavy if you will, 
But on our hopes set not a bitter heel. 

For tiny hopes like tiny flowers of Spring 

Will come, though death and ruin hold the land, 

Though storms may roar they may not break the wing 

Of the earthed lark whose song is ever bland. 

Fell year unpitiful, slow days of scorn, 

Your kind shall die, and sweeter days be born. 

A. Victor Ratclijfe 

THE BATTLEFIELD 

Around no fire the soldiers sleep to-night, 
But lie a-wearied on the ice-bound field, 
With cloaks wrapt round their sleeping forms, to 
shield 

Them from the northern winds. Ere comes the light 
Of morn brave men must arm, stern foes to fight. 

The sentry stands, his limbs with cold congealed; 

His head a-nod with sleep; he cannot yield, 
Though sleep and snow in deadly force unite. 

Amongst the sleepers lies the Boy awake. 

And wide-eyed plans brave glories that transcend 

The deeds of heroes dead; then dreams o'ertake 
His tired-out brain, and lofty fancies blend 

To one grand theme, and through all barriers break 
To guard from hurt his faithful sleeping friend. 

Sydney Oswald 



ON LES AURA! 181 



"ON LES AURA!" 

Soldat Jacques Bonhomme loquitur: 
See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted with 

pools of mire, 
Crossed by a burst abandoned trench and tortured 

strands of wire, 
Where splintered pickets reel and sag and leprous 

trench-rats play, 
That scour the Devil's hunting-ground to seek their 

carrion prey? 

That is the field my father loved, the field that once 
was mine, 

The land I nursed for my child's child as my fathers 
did long syne. 

See there a mound of powdered stones, all flattened, 

smashed, and torn, 
Gone black with damp and green with slime? — Ere 

you and I were born 
My father's father built a house, a little house and 

bare, 

And there I brought my woman home — that heap of 
rubble there! 

The soil of France ! Fat fields and green that bred my 

blood and bone! 
Each wound that scars my bosom's pride burns deeper 

than my own. 

But yet there is one thing to say — one thing that 
pays for all, 

Whatever lot our bodies know, whatever fate befall, 



182 



POETS MILITANT 



We hold the line! We hold it still! My fields are No 
Man's Land, 

But the good God is debonair and holds us by the 
hand. 

"On les aura /" See there! and there! soaked heaps 

of huddled grey! 
My fields shall laugh — enriched by those who sought 

them for a prey. 

James H. Knight- Adhin 

TO AN OLD LADY SEEN AT A GUEST- 
HOUSE FOR SOLDIERS 

Quiet thou didst stand at thine appointed place, 
There was no press to purchase — younger grace 
Attracts the youth of valour. Thou didst not know, 
Like the old, kindly Martha, to and fro 
To haste. Yet one could say, "In thine I prize 
The strength of calm that held in Mary's eyes." 
And when they came, thy gracious smile so wrought 
They knew that they were given, not that they bought. 
Thou didst not tempt to vauntings, and pretence 
Was dumb before thy perfect woman's sense. 
Blest who have seen, for they shall ever see 
The radiance of thy benignity. 

Alexander Robertson 

THE CASUALTY CLEARING STATION 

A bowl of daffodils, 

A crimson-quilted bed, 

Sheets and pillows white as snow — 

White and gold and red — 



HILLS OF HOME 



183 



And sisters moving to and fro, 
With soft and silent tread. 

So ail my spirit fills 
With pleasure infinite, 
And all the feathered wings of rest 
Seem flocking from the radiant West 
To bear me thro' the night- 
See, how they close me in, 
They, and the sisters' arms. 
One eye is closed, the other lid 
Is watching how my spirit slid 
Toward some red-roofed farms, 
And having crept beneath them slept 
Secure from war's alarms. 

Gilbert Waterhouse 

HILLS OF HOME 

Oh! yon hills are filled with sunlight, and the green 

leaves paled to gold, 
And the smoking mists of Autumn hanging faintly 

o'er the wold; 
I dream of hills of other days whose sides I loved to 

roam 

When Spring was dancing through the lanes of those 
distant hills of home. 

The winds of heaven gathered there as pure and cold 
as dew; 

Wood-sorrel and wild violets along the hedgerows 
grew, 



184 POETS MILITANT 



The blossom on the pear-trees was as white as flakes 
of foam 

In the orchard 'neath the shadow of those distant 
hills of home. 

The first white frost in the meadow will be shining 
there to-day 

And the furrowed upland glinting warm beside the 

woodland way; 
There, a bright face and a clear hearth will be waiting 

when I come, 

And my heart is throbbing wildly for those distant 
hills of home. 

Malcolm Hempkrey 



AUXILIARIES 



THE RED CROSS SPIRIT SPEAKS 



"Wherever war, with its red woes, 
Or flood, or fire, or famine goes, 

There, too, go I; 
If earth in any quarter quakes 
Or pestilence its ravage makes, 

Thither I fly, 

I kneel behind the soldier's trench, 

I walk 'mid shambles' smear and stench, 

The dead I mourn; 
I bear the stretcher and I bend 
O'er Fritz and Pierre and Jack to mend 

What shells have torn. 

I go wherever men may dare, 
I go wherever woman's care 

And love can live, 
Wherever strength and skill can bring 
Surcease to human suffering, 

Or solace give. 

I helped upon Haldora's shore; 
With Hospitaller Knights I bore 

The first red cross; 
I was the Lady of the Lamp; 
I saw in Solferino's camp 

The crimson loss. 



188 



AUXILIARIES 



I am your pennies and your pounds; 
I am your bodies on their rounds 

Of pain afar; 
I am you, doing what you would 
If you were only where you could — 

Your avatar. 



The cross which on my arm I wear, 
The flag which o'er my breast I bear, 

Is but the sign 
Of what you 'd sacrifice for him 
Who suffers on the hellish rim 

Of war's red line. 

John Fwley 
CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES 

I" I have once more to remark upon the devotion to duty, courage, and 
contempt of danger which has characterized the work of the Chaplains of 
the Army throughout this campaign." — Sir John French, in the Neuve 
Chapelle dispatch.] 

Ambassador of Christ you go 
Up to the very gates of Hell, 
Through fog of powder, storm of shell, 
To speak your Master's message: "Lo, 
The Prince of Peace is with you still, 
His peace be with you, His good-will." 



It is not small, your priesthood's price, 

To be a man and yet stand by, 

To hold your life while others die, 

To bless, not share the sacrifice, 

To watch the strife and take no part — 

You with the fire at your heart. 



SONG OF THE RED CROSS 189 



But yours, for our great Captain Christ, 

To know the sweat of agony, 

The darkness of Gethsemane, 

In anguish for these souls unpriced. 

Vicegerent of God's pity you, 

A sword must pierce your own soul througho 

In the pale gleam of new-born day. 
Apart in some tree-shadowed place, 
Your altar but a packing-case, 
Rude as the shed where Mary lay, 
Your sanctuary the rain-drenched sod, 
You bring the kneeling soldier God. 

As sentinel you guard the gate 
'Twixt life and death, and unto death 
Speed the brave soul whose failing breath 
Shudders not at the grip of Fate, 
But answers, gallant to the end, 
"Christ is the Word — and I his friend." 

Then God go with you, priest of God, 

For all is well and shall be well. 

What though you tread the roads of Hell, 

Your Captain these same ways has trod. 

Above the anguish and the loss 

Still floats the ensign of His Cross. 

Winifred M. Letts 

SONG OF THE RED CROSS 

O gracious ones, we bless your name 

Upon our bended knee; 
The voice of love with tongue of flame 

Records your charity. 



190 



AUXILIARIES 



Your hearts, your lives right willingly ye gave, 

That sacred ruth might shine; 
Ye fell, bright spirits, brave amongst the brave, 

Compassionate, divine. 

Example from your lustrous deeds 

The conqueror shall take, 
Sowing sublime and fruitful seeds 

Of aidos in this ache. 
And when our griefs have passed on gloomy wing, 

When friend and foe are sped, 
Sons of a morning to be born shall sing 

The radiant Cross of Red; 
Sons of a morning to be born shall sing 

The radiant Cross of Red. 

Eden Phillpotts 



THE HEALERS 

In a vision of the night I saw them, 

In the battles of the night. 
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood 

They were moving like light, 



Light of the reason, guarded 

Tense within the will, 
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs 

Burns steady and still. 

With scrutiny calm, and with fingers 

Patient as swift 
They bind up the hurts and the pain-wr&hen 

Bodies uplift, 



THE HEALERS 



191 



Un tired and defenceless; around them 

"With shrieks in its breath 
Bursts stark from the terrible horizon 

Impersonal death; 

But they take not their courage from anger 

That blinds the hot being; 
They take not their pity from weakness; 

Tender, yet seeing; 

Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost; 

Keen, like steel; 
Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken 
with, 

Who shall heal? 

They endure to have eyes of the watcher 

In hell, and not swerve 
For an hour from the faith that they follow^ 

The light that they serve. 

Man true to man, to his kindness 

That overflows all, 
To his spirit erect in the thunder 

When all his forts fail, — 

This light, in the tiger-mad welter, 

They serve and they save. 
What song shall be worthy to sing of them — 

Braver than the brave? 

Laurence Binyon 



192 



AUXILIARIES 



THE RED CROSS NURSES 

Out where the line of battle cleaves 
The horizon of woe 

And sightless warriors clutch the leaves 
The Red Cross nurses go. 
In where the cots of agony 
Mark death's unmeasured tide — 
Bear up the battle's harvestry — 
The Red Cross nurses glide. 

Look! Where the hell of steel has torn 
Its way through slumbering earth 
The orphaned urchins kneel forlorn 
And wonder at their birth. 
Until, above them, calm and wise 
With smile and guiding hand, 
God looking through their gentle eyes, 
The Red Cross nurses stand. 

Thomas L. Mas son 



KEEPING THE SEAS 



KILMENY 

(A Song of the Trawlers) 

Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west, 

As they shot their long meshes of steel overside; 
And the oily green waters were rocking to rest 

When Kilmeny went out, at the turn of the tide. 
And nobody knew where that lassie would roam, 

For the magic that called her was tapping unseen, 
It was well nigh a week ere Kilmeny came home, 

And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. 

She'd a gun at her bow that was Newcastle's best, 
And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the 
Clyde, 

And a secret her skipper had never confessed, 
Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride; 

And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome, 
The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin. 

O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from 
home, 

But nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. 

It was dark when Kilmeny came home from her 
quest, 

With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had 
died; 

But she moved like a bride with a rose at her breast; 
And "Well done, Kilmeny!" the admiral cried. 



196 KEEPING THE SEAS 



Now at sixty-four fathom a conger may come. 

And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine; 
But late in the evening Kilmeny came home, 

And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. 

There's a wandering shadow that stares at the foam 5 
Though they sing all the night to old England, their 
queen, 

Late, late in the evening Kilmeny came home, 
And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. 

Alfred Noyes 

THE MINE-SWEEPERS 

Dawn off the Foreland — the young flood making 

Jumbled and short and steep — 
Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking — 

Awkward water to sweep. 

" Mines reported in the fairway, 

Warn all traffic and detain. 
Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and 
Golden Gain." 

Noon off the Foreland — the first ebb making 

Lumpy and strong in the bight. 
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking 

And the jackdaws wild with fright. 

4 4 Mines located in the fairway, 

Boats now working up the chain, 
Sweepers — Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and 
Golden Gain" 

Dusk off the Foreland — the last light going 
And the traffic crowding through, 



MARE LIBERUM 



197 



And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing 

Heading the whole review! 

"Sweep eompleted in the fairway. 

No more mines remain. 
Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and 
Golden Gain." 

Rudyard Kipling 

MARE LIBERUM 

You dare to say with perjured lips, 

"We fight to make the ocean free"? 

You, whose black trail of butchered ships 
Bestrews the bed of every sea 
Where German submarines have wrought 
Their horrors ! Have you never thought, — ■ 

What you call freedom, men call piracy! 

Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave 

Where you have murdered, cry you down; 

And seamen whom you would not save, 

Weave now in weed-grown depths a crowtf 
Of shame for your imperious head, — 
A dark memorial of the dead, — 

Women and children whom you left to drow T n- 

Nay, not till thieves are set to guard 

The gold, and corsairs called to keep 

O'er peaceful commerce watch and ward, 
And wolves to herd the helpless sheep, 
Shall men and women look to thee — 
I Thou ruthless Old Man of the Sea — 

To safeguard law and freedom on the deep! 



198 KEEPING THE SEAS 



In nobler breeds we put our trust: 
The nations in whose sacred lore 

The "Ought" stands out above the "Must," 
And Honor rules in peace and war. 
With these we hold in soul and heart, 
With these we choose our lot and part, 

Till Liberty is safe on sea and shore. 

Henry van Dyke 

February 11, 1917 

THE DAWN PATROL 

Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea, 
Where, underneath, the restless waters flow — 

Silver, and cold, and slow. 
Dim in the east there burns a new-born sun, 
Whose rosy gleams along the ripples run, 

Save where the mist droops low, 
Hiding the level loneliness from me. 

And now appears beneath the milk-white haze 
A little fleet of anchored ships, which lie 

In clustered company, 
And seem as they are yet fast bound by sleep, 
Although the day has long begun to peep, 

With red-inflamed eye, 
Along the still, deserted ocean ways. 

The fresh, cold wind of dawn blows on my face 
As in the sun's raw heart I swiftly fly, 
And watch the seas glide by. 



DESTROYERS OFF JUTLAND 199 



Scarce human seem I, moving through the skies, 
And far removed from warlike enterprise — 

Like some great gull on high 
Whose white and gleaming wings beat on through 
space. 

Then do I feel with God quite, quite alone, 
High in the virgin morn, so white and still, 

And free from human ill: 
My prayers transcend my feeble earth-bound plaints -* 
As though I sang among the happy Saints 

With many a holy thrill — 
As though the glowing sun were God's bright Throne. 

My flight is done. I cross the line of foam 
That breaks around a town of grey and red, 

Whose streets and squares lie dead 
Beneath the silent dawn — then am I proud 
That England's peace to guard I am allowed; 

Then bow my humble head, 
In thanks to Him Who brings me safely home. 

Paul Betvsher 

DESTROYERS OFF JUTLAND 

[" If lost hounds could speak when they cast up next day after an un . 
checked night among the wild life of the dark they would talk much aw 
our destroyers do." — Rudyard Kipling.] 

They had hot scent across the spumy sea, 
Gehenna and her sister, swift Shaitan, 
That in the pack, with Goblin, Eblis ran 

And many a couple more, full cry, foot-free; 



200 KEEPING THE SEAS 



The dog-fox and his brood were fain to flee, 
But bare of fang and dangerous to the van 
That pressed them close. So when the kill began 

Some hounds were lamed and some died splendidly. 

But from the dusk along the Skagerack, 
Until dawn loomed upon the Beef of Horn 
And the last fox had slunk back to his earth, 
They kept the great traditions of the pack, 

Staunch-hearted through the hunt, as they were 
born, 

These hounds that England suckled at the birth. 

Reginald Mcintosh Cleveland 

BBITISH MEBCHANT SEBVICE 

Oh, down by Mill wall Basin as I went the other day, 
I met a skipper that I knew, and to him I did say: 
"Now what's the cargo, Captain, that brings you up 
this way?" 

"Oh, I've been up and down (said he) and round 

about also . . . 
From Sydney to the Skagerack, and Kiel to Callao . . . 
With a leaking steam-pipe all the way to Cali- 

forn-i-o . . . 

"With pots and pans and ivory fans and every kind of 
thing, 

Sails and nails and cotton bales, and sewer pipes and 
string . . . 

But now I'm through with cargoes, and I'm here to 
serve the King! 



BRITISH MERCHANT SERVICE 201 



"And if it's sweeping mines (to which my fancy some- 
what leans) 

Or hanging out with booby-traps for the skulking 
submarines, 

I 'm here to do my blooming best and give the beggars 
beans ! 

"A rough job and a tough job is the best job for me, 
And what or where I don't much care, I '11 take what it 
may be, 

For a tight place is the right place when it's foul 
weather at sea!" 



There 's not a port he does n't know from Melbourne 

to New York; 
He 's as hard as a lump of harness beef, and as salt as 

pickled pork . . . 
And he'll stand by a wreck in a murdering gale and 

count it part of his work ! 

He 's the terror of the fo'c's'le when he heals its various 
ills 

With turpentine and mustard leaves, and poultices 
and pills . . . 

But he knows the sea like the palm of his hand, as a 
shepherd knows the hills. 

He '11 spin you yarns from dawn to dark — and half of 
'em are true! 

He swears in a score of languages, and maybe talks in 
two! 

And . . .he'll lower a boat in a hurricane to save a 
drowning crew. 



m KEEPING THE SEAS 



A rough job or a tough job — he's handled two or 
three — 

And what or where he won't much care, nor ask what 

the risk may be . . . 
For a tight place is the right place when it's wild 

weather at sea! 

C. Fox Smith 



THE WOUNDED 



TO A SOLDIER IN HOSPITAL 



Courage came to you with your boyhood's grace 

Of ardent life and limb. 
Each day new dangers steeled you to the test, 

To ride, to climb, to swim. 
Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death 
With every breath. 

So when you went to play another game 

You could not but be brave: 
An Empire's team ; a rougher football field, 

The end — perhaps your grave. 
What matter? On the winning of a goal 
You staked your soul. 

Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth 

With carelessness and joy. 
But in what Spartan school of discipline 

Did you get patience, boy? 
How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain 
And not complain? 

Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims. 

Impulsive as a colt, 
How do you lie here month by weary month 

Helpless, and not revolt? 
What joy can these monotonous days afford 
Here in a ward? 



206 



THE WOUNDED 



Yet you are merry as the birds in spring, 

Or feign the gaiety, 
Lest those who dress and tend your wound each 

day 

Should guess the agony. 
Lest they should suffer — this the only fear 
You let draw near. 

Greybeard philosophy has sought in books 

And argument this truth, 
That man is greater than his pain, but you 

Have learnt it in your youth. 
You know the wisdom taught by Calvary 
At twenty-three. 

Death would have found you brave, but braver 
still 

You face each lagging day, 
A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous, 

Divinely kind and gay. 
You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate 
Of unkind Fate. 

Careless philosopher, the first to laugh, 

The latest to complain, 
Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this 

In your long fight with pain : 
Since God made man so good — here stands my 
creed — 

God 's good indeed. 

Winifred M. Letts 



BETWEEN THE LINES 207 



BETWEEN THE LINES 

When consciousness came back, he found he lay 

Between the opposing fires, but could not tell 

On which hand were his friends; and either way 

For him to turn was chancy — bullet and shell 

Whistling and shrieking over him, as the glare 

Of searchlights scoured the darkness to blind day. 

He scrambled to his hands and knees ascare, 

Dragging his wounded foot through puddled clay, 

And tumbled in a hole a shell had scooped 

At random in a turnip-field between 

The unseen trenches where the foes lay cooped 

Through that unending battle of unseen, 

Dead-locked, league-stretching armies; and quite spent 

He rolled upon his back within the pit, 

And lay secure, thinking of all it meant — 

His lying in that little hole, sore hit, 

But living, while across the starry sky 

Shrapnel and shell went screeching overhead — 

Of all it meant that he, Tom Dodd, should lie 

Among the Belgian turnips, while his bed . . . 

If it were he, indeed, who 'd climbed each night, 

Fagged with the day's work, up the narrow stair, 

And slipt his clothes off in the candle-light, 

Too tired to fold them neatly in a chair 

The way his mother'd taught him — too dog-tired 

After the long day's serving in the shop, 

Inquiring what each customer required, 

Politely talking weather, fit to drop . . . 

And now for fourteen days and nights, at least, 
He had n't had his clothes off, and had lain 



208 



THE WOUNDED 



In muddy trenches, napping like a beast 
With one eye open, under sun and rain 
And that unceasing hell-fire . . . 

It was strange 

How things turned out — the chances! You'd just got 
To take your ]uck in life, you could n't change 
Your luck. 

And so here he was lying shot 
Who just six months ago had thought to spend 
His days behind a counter. Still, perhaps . . . 
And now, God only knew how he would end! 

He 'd like to know how many of the chaps 
Had won back to the trench alive, when he 
Had fallen wounded and been left for dead, 
If any! . . . 

This was different, certainly, 
From selling knots of tape and reels of thread • 
And knots of tape and reels of thread and knots 
Of tape and reels of thread and knots of tape, 
Day in, day out, and answering "Have you got" 's 
And "'Do you keep" ? s till there seemed no escape 
From everlasting serving in a shop, 
Inquiring what each customer required, 
Politely talking weather, fit to drop, 
With swollen ankles, tired . . . 

But he was tired 
Now. Every bone was aching, and had ached 
For fourteen days and nights in that wet trench — 
Just duller when he slept than when he waked — 
Crouching for shelter from the steady drench 
Of shell and shrapnel . . . 



BETWEEN THE LINES 209 



That old trench, it seemed 
Almost like home to him. He'd slept and fed 
And sung and smoked in it, while shrapnel screamed 
And shells went whining harmless overhead — 
Harmless, at least, as far as he . . . 

But Dick — 
Dick had n't found them harmless yesterday, 
At breakfast, when he'd said he could n't stick 
Eating dry bread, and crawled out the back way, 
And brought them butter in a lordly dish — 
Butter enough for all, and held it high, 
Yellow and fresh and clean as you would wish — 
"When plump upon the plate from out the sky 
A shell fell bursting . . . Where the butter went, 
God only knew! . . . 

And Dick . . . He dared not think 
Of what had come to Dick ... or what it meant — 
The shrieking and the whistling and the stink 
He'd lived in fourteen days and nights. 'T was luck 
That he still lived . . . And queer how little then 
He seemed to care that Dick . . . perhaps 't was 
pluck 

That hardened him — a man among the men — 
Perhaps . . . Yet, only think things out a bit, 
And he was rabbit-livered, blue with funk! 
And he 'd liked Dick . . . and yet when Dick was hit. 
He had n't turned a hair. The meanest skunk 
He should have thought would feel it when his mate 
Was blown to smithereens — Dick, proud as punch, 
Grinning like sin, and holding up the plate — 
But he had gone on munching his dry hunch, 
Unwinking, till he swallowed the last crumb. 



210 



THE WOUNDED 



Perhaps 't was just because he dared not let 
His mind run upon Dick, who'd been his chum. 
He dared not now, though he could not forget. 

Dick took his luck. And, life or death, 't was luck 
From first to last; and you'd just got to trust 
Your luck and grin. It was n't so much pluck 
As knowing that you'd got to, when needs must, 
And better to die grinning . . . 

Quiet now 
Had fallen on the night. On either hand 
The guns were quiet. Cool upon his brow 
The quiet darkness brooded, as he scanned 
The starry sky. He'd never seen before 
So many stars. Although, of course, he'd known 
That there were stars, somehow before the war 
He'd never realised them — so thick-sown, 
Millions and millions. Serving in the shop, 
Stars did n't count for much; and then at nights 
Strolling the pavements, dull and fit to drop, 
You did n't see much but the city lights. 
He 'd never in his life seen so much sky 
As he'd seen this last fortnight. It was queer 
The things war taught you. He'd a mind to try 
To count the stars — they shone so bright and clear* 

One, two, three, four . . . Ah, God, but he was tired . . 
Five, six, seven, eight . . . 

Yes, it was number eight. 
And what was the next thing that she required? 
(Too bad of customers to come so late, 
At closing time!) Again within the shop 



BETWEEN THE LINES 211 



He handled knots of tape and reels of thread, 
Politely talking weather, fit to drop . . . 

When once again the whole sky overhead 

Flared blind with searchlights, and the shriek of shell 

And scream of shrapnel roused him. Drowsily 

He stared about him, wondering. Then he fell 

Into deep dreamless slumber. 



He could see 
Two dark eyes peeping at him, ere he knew 
He was awake, and it again was day — 
An August morning, burning to clear blue. 
The frightened rabbit scuttled . . . 

Far away, 

A sound of firing . . . Up there, in the sky 
Big dragon-flies hung hovering . . . Snowballs burst 
About them . . . Flies and snowballs: With a cry 
He crouched to watch the airmen pass — the first 
That he'd seen under fire. Lord, that was pluck — 
Shells bursting all about them — and what nerve! 
They took their chance, and trusted to their luck. 
At such a dizzy height to dip and swerve, 
Dodging the shell-fire . . . 

Hell! but one was hit, 
And tumbling like a pigeon, plump . . . 

Thank Heaven, 
It righted, and then turned; and after it 
The whole flock followed safe — four, five, six, seven, 
Yes, they were all there safe. He hoped they'd win 
Back to their lines in safety. They deserved, 
Even if they were Germans . . . 'T was no sin 



212 



THE WOUNDED 



To wish them luck. Think how that beggar swerved 
Just in the nick of time! 

He, too, must try 
To win back to the lines, though, likely as not, 
He'd take the wrong turn: but he could n't lie 
Forever in that hungry hole and rot, 
He 'd got to take his luck, to take his chance 
Of being sniped by foes or friends. He'd be 
With any luck in Germany or France 
Or Kingdom-come, next morning . . . 

Drearily 

The blazing day burnt over him, shot and shell 
Whistling and whining ceaselessly. But light 
Faded at last, and as the darkness fell 
He rose, and crawled away into the night. 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 

THE WHITE COMRADE 
(After W. H. Leatham's The Comrade in White) 

Under our curtain of fire, 

Over the clotted clods, 

We charged, to be withered, to reel 

And despairingly wheel 

When the signal bade us retire 

From the terrible odds. 

As we ebbed with the battle-tide, 
Fingers of red-hot steel 
Suddenly closed on my side. 
I fell, and began to pray. 
I crawled on my hands and lay 



THE WHITE COMRADE 213 



Where a shallow crater yawned wide; 
Then, — I swooned. . . . 

When I woke, it was yet day. 
Fierce was the pain of my wound, 
But I saw it was death to stir, 
For fifty paces away 
Their trenches were. 
In torture I prayed for the dark 
And the stealthy step of my friend 
Who, staunch to the very end, 
Would creep to the danger zone 
And offer his life as a mark 
To save my own. 

Night fell. I heard his tread, 

Not stealthy, but firm and serene, 

As if my comrade's head 

Were lifted far from that scene 

Of passion and pain and dread; 

As if my comrade's heart 

In carnage took no part; 

As if my comrade's feet 

W r ere set on some radiant street 

Such as no darkness might haunt; 

As if my comrade's eyes, 

No deluge of flame could surprise, 

No death and destruction daunt, 

No red-beaked bird dismay, 

Nor sight of decay. 

Then in the bursting shells' dim light 
I saw he was clad in white. 



214 



THE WOUNDED 



For a moment I thought that I saw the smock 

Of a shepherd in search of his flock. 

Alert were the enemy, too, 

And their bullets flew 

Straight at a mark no bullet could fail; 

For the seeker was tall and his robe was bright; 

But he did not flee nor quail. 

Instead, with unhurrying stride 

He came, 

And gathering my tall frame, 
Like a child, in his arms. . . . 

Again I swooned, 

And awoke 

From a blissful dream 

In a cave by a stream. 

My silent comrade had bound my side. 

No pain now was mine, but a wish that I spoke, — 

A mastering wish to serve this man 

Who had ventured through hell my doom to revoke, 

As only the truest of comrades can. 

I begged him to tell me how best I might aid him, 

And urgently prayed him 

Never to leave me, whatever betide; 

When I saw he was hurt — 

Shot through the hands that were clasped in prayer! 

Then, as the dark drops gathered there 

And fell in the dirt, 

The wounds of my friend 

Seemed to me such as no man might bear. 

Those bullet-holes in the patient hands 

Seemed to transcend 

All horrors that ever these war-drenched lands 
Had known or would know till the mad world's end. 



FLEURETTE 



215 



Then suddenly I was aware 
That his feet had been wounded, too; 
And, dimming the white of his side, 
A dull stain grew. 

"You are hurt, White Comrade!" I cried. 
His words I already foreknew: 
"These are old wounds," said he, 
"But of late they have troubled me." 

Robert Haven Scliauffler 

FLEURETTE 

The Wounded Canadian Speaks: 

My leg? It's off at the knee. 

Do I miss it? Well, some. You see 

I've had it since I was born; 

And lately a devilish corn. 

(I rather chuckle with glee 

To think how I've fooled that corn.) 

But I'll hobble around all right. 
It is n't that, it 's my face. 
Oh, I know I'm a hideous sight, 
Hardly a thing in place. 
Sort of gargoyle, you'd say. 
Nurse won't give me a glass, 
But I see the folks as they pass 
Shudder and turn away; 
Turn away in distress . . . 
Mirror enough, I guess. 
I'm gay! You bet I am gay, 
But I was n't a while ago. 
If you 'd seen me even to-day, 



216 



THE WOUNDED 



The darnedest picture of woe, 
With this Caliban mug of mine, 
So ravaged and raw and red, 
Turned to the wall — in fine 
Wishing that I was dead. . . . 
What has happened since then, 
Since I lay with my face to the wall, 
The most despairing of men! 
Listen! I'll tell you all. 

That poilu across the way. 

With the shrapnel wound on his head, 

Has a sister: she came to-day 

To sit awhile by his bed. 

All morning I heard him fret: 

"Oh, when will she come, Fleurette?" 

Then sudden, a joyous cry; 
The tripping of little feet; 
The softest, tenderest sigh; 
A voice so fresh and sweet; 
Clear as a silver bell, 
Fresh as the morning dews: 
" C'est toi, c'est toi, Marcel I 
Monfrere, comme je suis heureuse / " 

So over the blanket's rim 

I raised my terrible face, 

And I saw — how I envied him! 

A girl of such delicate grace; 

Sixteen, all laughter and love; 

As gay as a linnet, and yet 

As tenderly sweet as a dove; 

Half woman, half child — Fleurette. 



FLEURETTE 



217 



Then I turned to the wall again. 
(I was awfully blue, you see,) 
And I thought with a bitter pain: 
"Such visions are not for me." 
So there like a log I lay, 
All hidden, I thought, from view, 
When sudden I heard her say: 
"Ah! Who is that malheureux V* 
Then briefly I heard him tell 
(However he came to know) 
How I'd smothered a bomb that fell 
Into the trench, and so 
None of my men were hit, 
Though it busted me up a bit. 

Well, I did n't quiver an eye, 

And he chattered and there she sat; 

And I fancied I heard her sigh — 

But I would n't just swear to that. 

And maybe she was n't so bright, 

Though she talked in a merry strain, 

And I closed my eyes ever so tight, 

Yet I saw her ever so plain: 

Her dear little tilted nose, 

Her delicate, dimpled chin, 

Her mouth like a budding rose, 

And the glistening pearls within; 

Her eyes like the violet: 

Such a rare little queen — Fleurette. 

And at last when she rose to go, 
The light was a little dim, 
And I ventured to peep, and so 
I saw her, graceful and slim, 



218 



THE WOUNDED 



And she kissed him and kissed him, and oh 
How I envied and envied him! 

So when she was gone I said 

In rather a dreary voice 

To him of the opposite bed: 

"Ah, friend, how you must rejoice! 

But me, I'm a thing of dread. 

For me nevermore the bliss, 

The thrill of a woman's kiss." 

Then I stopped, for lo! she was there, 

And a great light shone in her eyes. 

And me! I could only stare, 

I was taken so by surprise, 

When gently she bent her head: 

" May I kiss you, sergeant ?" she said. 

Then she kissed my burning lips, 
With her mouth like a scented flower, 
And I thrilled to the finger-tips, 
And I had n't even the power 
To say: "God bless you, dear!" 
And I felt such a precious tear 
Fall on my withered cheek, 
And darn it! I could n't speak. 

And so she went sadly away, 

And I know that my eyes were wet. 

Ah, not to my dying day 

Will I forget, forget! 

Can you wonder now I am gay? 

God bless her, that little Fleurette! 

Robert W. Service 



NOT TO KEEP 219 



NOT TO KEEP 

They sent him back to her. The letter came 
Saying . . . and she could have him. And before 
She could be sure there was no hidden ill 
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight — 
Living. — They gave him back to her alive — 
How else? They are not known to send the dead — 
And not disfigured visibly. His face? — 
His hands? She had to look — to ask, 
"What was it, dear?" And she had given all 
And still she had all — they had — they the lucky! 
Was n't she glad now? Everything seemed won, 
And all the rest for them permissible ease. 
She had to ask, "What was it, dear?" 

"Enough, 

Yet not enough. A bullet through and through, 
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care 
And medicine and rest — and you a week, 
Can cure me of to go again." The same 
Grim giving to do over for them both. 
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes 
How was it with him for a second trial. 
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask. 
They had given him back to her, but not to keep. 

Robert Frost 



THE FALLEN 



THE DEAD 



I 

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! 

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, 
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. 

These laid the world away; poured out the red 

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the vears to be 
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, 
That men call age ; and those who would have been* 

Their sons, they gave, their immortality. 

Blow T , bugles, blow ! They brought us, for our dearth, 

Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. 
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, 
And paid his subjects with a royal wage; 
And Nobleness walks in our ways again; 
And we have come into our heritage. 

II 

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares 
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. 
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was 
theirs, 

And sunset, and the colours of the earth. 

These had seen movement and heard music: 
known 

Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; 

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; 
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is 
ended. 



224 



THE FALLEN 



There are waters blown by changing winds to 
laughter 

And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, 
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance 

And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white 
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, 

A width, a shining peace, under the night. 

Rupert Brooke 



THE ISLAND OF SKYROS 

Here, where we stood together, we three men, 

Before the war had swept us to the East 
Three thousand miles away, I stand again 

And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast* 
We trod the same path, to the selfsame place, 

Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves, 
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase, 

And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves. 
So, since we communed here, our bones have been 

Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be, 
Earth and the worldwide battle lie between, 

Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea. 
Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood 
As I stand now, with pulses beating blood. 

I saw her like a shadow on the sky 
In the last light, a blur upon the sea, 

Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by, 
But from one grave that island talked to me; 

And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm, 
I saw its blackness and a blinking light, 



FOR THE FALLEN 



225 



And thought, " So death obscures your gentle form, 
So memory strives to make the darkness bright; 

And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, 
Part of the island till the planet ends, 

My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, 
Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, 

While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, 

War with this force, and breathe, and am its king.'*' 

John Masefield 

FOR THE FALLEN 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children 
England mourns for her dead across the sea. 
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 
Fallen in the cause of the free. 

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, 
There is music in the midst of desolation 
And a glory that shines upon our tears. 

They went with songs to the battle, they were young, 
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. 
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; 
They fell with their faces to the foe. 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow 
old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 
At the going down of the sun and in the morning 
We will remember them. 



226 



THE FALLEN 



They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; 
They sit no more at familiar tables of home; 
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; 
They sleep beyond England's foam. 

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, 
To the innermost heart of their own land they are 
known 

As the stars are known to the Night; 

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, 
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; 
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness 
To the end, to the end, they remain. 

Laurence Binyon 

TWO SONNETS 
I 

Saints have adored the lofty soul of you. 

Poets have whitened at your high renown. 

We stand among the many millions who 

Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down. 

You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried 

To live as of your presence unaware. 

But now in every road on every side 

We see your straight and steadfast signpost there, 

I think it like that signpost in my land 

Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go 

Upward, into the hills, on the right hand, 

Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow, 



HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE 227 



A homeless land and friendless, but a land 
I did not know and that I wished to know. 

II 

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat: 
Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, 
A merciful putting away of what has been. 

And this we know: Death is not Life effete, 
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen 
So marvellous things know well the end not yet. 

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death: 
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say, 
66 Come, what was your record when you drew breath? 99 
But a big blot has hid each yesterday 
So poor, so manifestly incomplete. 
And your bright Promise, withered long and sped, 
Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet 
And blossoms and is you, when you are dead. 

Charles Hamilton Sorley 

June 12, 1915 

"HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE'* 

Nay, nay, sweet England, do not grieve! 

Not one of these poor men who died 
But did within his soul believe 

That death for thee was glorified. 

Ever they watched it hovering near 
That mystery 'yond thought to plumb, 

Perchance sometimes in loathed fear 

They heard cold Danger whisper, Come ! — ■ 



228 



THE FALLEN 



Heard and obeyed. 0, if thou weep 
Such courage and honour, beauty, care, 

Be it for joy that those who sleep 
Only thy joy could share. 

Walter de la Mare 

THE DEBT 

No more old England will they see — ■ 
Those men who've died for you and me. 

So lone and cold they lie; but we, 
We still have life; we still may greet 
Our pleasant friends in home and street; 
We still have life, are able still 
To climb the turf of Bignor Hill, 
To see the placid sheep go by, 
To hear the sheep-dog's eager cry, 
To feel the sun, to taste the rain, 
To smell the Autumn's scents again 
Beneath the brown and gold and red 
Which old October's brush has spread, 
To hear the robin in the lane, 
To look upon the English sky. 

So young they were, so strong and well, 

Until the bitter summons fell — ■ 

Too young to die. 

Yet there on foreign soil they lie, 

So pitiful, with glassy eye 

And limbs all tumbled anyhow: 

Quite finished, now. 



THE DEBT 



229 



On every heart — lest we forget — 
Secure at home — engrave this debt! 

Too delicate is flesh to be 

The shield that nations interpose 

'Twixt red Ambition and his foes — ■ 

The bastion of Liberty. 

So beautiful their bodies were, 

Built with so exquisite a care: 

So young and fit and lithe and fair. 

The very flower of us were they, 

The very flower, but yesterday! 

Yet now so pitiful they lie, 

Where love of country bade them hie 

To fight this fierce Caprice — and die. 

All mangled now, where shells have burst, 

And lead and steel have done their worst; 

The tender tissues ploughed away, 

The years' slow processes effaced: 

The Mother of us all — disgraced. 

And^some l^ave wives behind, young wives ; 

Already some have launched new lives: 

A little daughter, little son — 

For thus this blundering world goes on. 

But never more will any see 

The old secure felicity, 

The kindnesses that made us glad 

Before the world went mad. 

They '11 never hear another bird, 

Another gay or loving word — 

Those men who lie so cold and lone, 

Far in a country not their own; 



230 



THE FALLEN 



Those men who died for you and me, 
That England still might sheltered be 
And all our lives go on the same 
(Although to live is almost shame). 

E. V. Lucas 

REQUIESCANT 

In lonely watches night by night 
Great visions burst upon my sight, 
For down the stretches of the sky 
The hosts of dead go marching by. 

Strange ghostly banners o'er them float, 
Strange bugles sound an awful note, 
And all their faces and their eyes 
Are lit with starlight from the skies. 

The anguish and the pain have passed 
And peace hath come to them at last, 
But in the stern looks linger still 
The iron purpose and the will. 

Dear Christ, who reign'st above the flood 
Of human tears and human blood, 
A weary road these men have trod, 
O house them in the home of God! 

Frederick George Scott 

In a Field near Ypres 
April, 1915 



TO OUR FALLEN 231 

TO OUR FALLEN 

Ye sleepers, who will sing you? 

We can but give our tears — 
Ye dead men, who shall bring you 

Fame in the coming years? 
Brave souls . . . but who remembers 
The flame that fired your embers? . . • 
Deep, deep the sleep that holds you 

Who one time had no peers. 

Yet maybe Fame 's but seeming 

And praise you 'd set aside, 
Content to go on dreaming, 

Yea, happy to have died 
If of all things you prayed for — 
All things your valour paid for — ■ 
One prayer is not forgotten, 

One purchase not denied. 

But God grants your dear England 
A strength that shall not cease 

Till she have won for all the Earth 
From ruthless men release, 

And made supreme upon her 

Mercy and Truth and Honour — 

Is this the thing you died for? 
Oh, Brothers, sleep in peace ! 

Robert Ernest Vernede 



232 



THE FALLEN 



THE OLD SOLDIER 

Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven, 
God bids the old soldier they all adored 

Come to Him and wait for them, clean, new-shriven, 
A happy doorkeeper in the House of the Lord. 

Lest it abash them, the strange new splendour, 
Lest it affright them, the new robes clean; 

Here's an old face, now, long-tried, and tender, 
A word and a hand-clasp as they troop in. 

"My boys," he greets them: and heaven is homely, 
He their great captain in days gone o'er; 

I>ear is the friend's face, honest and comely, 
Waiting to welcome them by the strange door. 

Katharine Tynan 



LORD KITCHENER 

Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee 
And face thy country's peril wheresoe'er, 
Directing war and peace with equal care, 

Till by long duty ennobled thou wert he 

Whom England call'd and bade 4 4 Set my arm free 
To obey my will and save my honour fair," — 
What day the foe presumed on her despair 

And she herself had trust in none but thee: 

Among Herculean deeds the miracle 

That mass'd the labour of ten years in one 
Shall be thy monument. Thy work was done 



KITCHENER 



233 



Ere we could thank thee; and the high sea swell 
Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell 
By the lone Orkneys, at the set of sun. 

Robert Bridges 

June 8, 1916 

KITCHENER 

There is wild water from the north; 

The headlands darken in their foam 

As with a threat of challenge stubborn earth 

Booms at that far wild sea-line charging home. 

The night shall stand upon the shifting sea 

As yesternight stood there, 

And hear the cry of waters through the air, 

The iron voice of headlands start and rise — 

The noise of winds for mastery 

That screams to hear the thunder in those cries. 

But now henceforth there shall be heard 

From Brough of Bursay, Marwick Head, 

And shadows of the distant coast, 

Another voice bestirred — 

Telling of something greatly lost 

Somewhere below the tidal glooms, and dead. 

Beyond the uttermost 

Of aught the night may hear on any seas 

From tempest-known wild water's cry, and roar 

Of iron shadows looming from the shore, 

It shall be heard — and when the Oread es 

Sleep in a hushed Atlantic's starry folds 

As smoothly as, far down below the tides, 



234 



THE FALLEN 



Sleep on the windless broad sea-wolds 
Where this night's shipwreck hides. 

By many a sea-holm where the shock 
Of ocean's battle falls, and into spray 
Gives up its ghosts of strife; by reef and rock 
Ravaged by their eternal brute affray 
With monstrous frenzies of their shore's green foe; 
Where overstream and overfall and undertow 
Strive, snatch away; 
A wistful voice, without a sound, 
Shall dwell beside Pomona, on the sea, 
And speak the homeward- and the outward-bound, 
And touch the helm of passing minds 
And bid them steer as wistfully — 
Saying: 44 He did great work, until the winds 
And waters hereabout that night betrayed 
Him to the drifting death ! His work went on — 
He would not be gainsaid. . . . 
Though where his bones are, no man knows, not 
one!" 

John Helston 

THE FALLEN SUBALTERN 

The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten; 

We bear our fallen friend without a sound; 
Below the waiting legions lie and listen 

To us, who march upon their burial-ground. 

Wound in the flag of England, here we lay him; 

The guns will flash and thunder o'er the grave; 
What other winding sheet should now array him, 

What other music should salute the brave? 



THE DEBT UNPAYABLE 235 



As goes the Sun-god in his chariot glorious, 
When all his golden banners are unfurled, 

So goes the soldier, fallen but victorious, 
And leaves behind a twilight in the world. 

And those who come this way, in days hereafter, 
Will know that here a boy for England fell, 

Who looked at danger with the eyes of laughter, 
And on the charge his days were ended well. 

One last salute; the bayonets clash and glisten; 

With arms reversed we go without a sound: 
One more has joined the men who lie and listen 

To us, who march upon their burial-ground. 

Herbert Asquith 

1915 



THE DEBT UNPAYABLE 

What have I given, 

Bold sailor on the sea, 
In earth or heaven, 

That you should die for me? 

What can I give, 

soldier, leal and brave, 
Long as I live, 

To pay the life you gave? 

What tithe or part 

Can I return to thee, 
O stricken heart, 

That thou shouldst break for me? 



236 



THE FALLEN 



The wind of Death 

For you has slain life's flowers, 
It withereth 

(God grant) all weeds in ours. 

F. W. Bourdillon 

THE MESSAGES 

"I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
Dropt dead beside me in the trench — and three 
Whispered their dying messages to me. ..." 

Back from the trenches, more dead than alive, 
Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee, 
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly: 

"I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three 
Whispered their dying messages to me. . . . 

"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they 
thrive — 

Waiting a word in silence patiently. . . . 

But what they said, or who their friends may be 

"I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
Dropt dead beside me in the trench — and three 
Whispered their dying messages to me. . . ." 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 



A CROSS IN FLANDERS 237 



A CROSS IN FLANDERS 

In the face of death, they say, he joked — he had no 
fear; 

His comrades, when they laid him in a Flanders 
grave, 

Wrote on a rough-hewn cross — a Calvary stood near — 
"Without a fear he gave 

"His life, cheering his men, with laughter on his 
lips." 

So wrote they, mourning him. Yet was there only 
one 

Who fully understood his laughter, his gay quips, 
One only, she alone — 

She who, not so long since, when love was new-con- 
fest, 

Herself toyed with light laughter while her eyes were 
dim, 

And jested, while with reverence despite her jest 
She worshipped God and him. 

She knew — O Love, O Death ! — his soul had been 
at grips 

With the most solemn things. For she, was she 
not dear? 

Yes, he was brave, most brave, with laughter on his 
lips, 

The braver for his fear! 

G. Rostrevor Hamilton 



238 



THE FALLEN 



RESURRECTION 

Not long did we lie on the torn, red field of pain. 
We fell, we. lay, we slumbered, we took rest, 
With the wild nerves quiet at last, and the vexed 
brain 

Cleared of the winged nightmares, and the breast 
Freed of the heavy dreams of hearts afar. 
We rose at last under the morning star. 
W 7 e rose, and greeted our brothers, and welcomed our 
foes. 

W r e rose; like the wheat when the wind is over, we 
rose. 

With shouts we rose, with gasps and incredulous 
cries, 

With bursts of singing, and silence, and awestruck 

eyes, 

With broken laughter, half tears, we rose from the 
sod, 

With welling tears and with glad lips, whispering, 
"God." 

Like babes, refreshed from sleep, like children, we 
rose, 

Brimming with deep content, from our dreamless 
repose. 

And, "What do you call it?" asked one. "I thought I 
was dead." 

"You are," cried another. "We're all of us dead and 
fiat." 

"I'm alive as a cricket. There's something wrong 

with your head." 
They stretched their limbs and argued it out where 

they sat. 



RUPERT BROOKE 



239 



And over the wide field friend and foe 
Spoke of small things, remembering not old woe 
Of war and hunger, hatred and fierce words. 
They sat and listened to the brooks and birds, 
And watched the starlight perish in pale flame, 
Wondering what God would look like when He came. 

Hermann Hagedorn 



TO A HERO 

We may not know how fared your soul before 

Occasion came to try it by this test. 
Perchance, it used on lofty wings to soar; 

Again, it may have dwelt in lowly nest. 

We do not know if bygone knightly strain 
Impelled you then, or blood of humble clod 

"Defied the dread adventure to attain 
The cross of honor or the peace of God. 

We see but this, that wfyen the moment came 

You raised on high, then drained, the solemn cup - 

The grail of death; that, touched by valor's flame, 
The kindled spirit burned the body up. 

Oscar C. A. Child 



RUPERT BROOKE 

(In Mkmoriam) 

I never knew you save as all men know 
Twitter of mating birds, flutter of wings 

In April coverts, and the streams that flow — 
One of the happy voices of our Springs. 



240 



THE FALLEN 



A voice for ever stilled, a memory, 

Since you went eastward with the fighting ships$ 
A hero of the great new Odyssey, 

And God has laid His finger on your lips. 

Moray Ballon 

THE PLAYERS 

We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice. 

We laughed and paid the forfeit, glad to pay — 
Being recompensed beyond our sacrifice 

With that nor Death nor Time can take away. 

Francis Bicldey 

A SOXG 

Oh, red is the English rose, 
And the lilies of France are pale, 
And the poppies grow in the golden wheat, 
For the men whose eyes are heavy with sleep, 
Where the ground is red as the English rose, 
And the lips as the lilies of France are pale, 
And the ebbing pulses beat fainter and fainter and 
fail. 

Oh, red is the English rose, 
And the lilies of France are pale. 
And the poppies lie in the level corn 
For the men who sleep and never return. 
But wherever they lie an English rose 
So red, and a lily of France so pale, 
Will grow for a love that never and never can fail 
Charles Alexander Richmond 



WOMEN AND THE WAR 



HARVEST MOON 



Over the twilight field, 

Over the glimmering field 

And bleeding furrows, wuth their sodden yield 

Of sheaves that still did writhe, 

After the scythe; 

The teeming field, and darkly overstrewn 
With all the garnered fullness of that noon — 
Two looked upon each other. 
One was a Woman, men had called their mothers 
And one the Harvest Moon. 

And one the Harvest Moon 
Who stood, who gazed 

On those unquiet gleanings, where they bled; 
Till the lone Woman said: 

66 But we were crazed . . . 

We should laugh now together, I and you; 

We two. 

You, for your ever dreaming it was worth 
A star's while to look on, and light the earth; 
And I, for ever telling to my mind 
Glory it was and gladness, to give birth 
To human kind. 

I gave the breath, — and thought it not amiss. 

I gave the breath to men, 

For men to slay again; 

Lording it over anguish, all to give 

My life, that men might live, 

For this. 



244 WOMEN AND THE WAR 



" You will be laughing now, remembering 

We called you once Dead World, and barren ihing. 

Yes, so we called you then, 

You, far more wise 

Than to give life to men." 

Over the field that there 

Gave back the skies 

A scattered upward stare 

From sightless eyes, 

The furrowed field that lay 

Striving awhile, through many a bleeding dune 

Of throbbing clay, — but dumb and quiet soon, 

She looked; and went her way, 

The Harvest Moon. 

Josephine Preston Peabody 

HARVEST MOON: 1916 

Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim, 
Moon of the lifted tides and their folded burden, 
Look, look down. And gather the blinded oceans, 
Moon of compassion. 

Ccme, white Silence, over the one sea pathway: 
Pour with hallowing hands on the surge and outcry. 
Silver flame; and over the famished blackness, 
Petals of moonlight. 

Once again, the formless void of a world-wreck 
Gropes its way through the echoing dark of chaos; 
Tide on tide, to the calling, lost horizons, — 
One in the darkness. 



MY SON 



245 



You that veil the light of the all-beholding, 
Shed white tidings down to the dooms of longing, 
Down to the timeless dark; and the sunken treasures, 
One in the darkness. 

Touch, and harken, — under that shrouding silver, 
Rise and fall, the heart of the sea and its legions, 
All and one; one with the breath of the deathless, 
Rising and falling. 

Touch and waken so, to a far hereafter, 
Ebb and flow, the deep, and the dead in their longing: 
Till at last, on the hungering face of the waters, 
There shall be Light. 

Light of Light, give us to see, for their sake. 
Light of Light, grant them eternal peace; 
And let light perpetual shine upon them; 
Light, everlasting. 

Josephine Preston Peabody 

MY SON 

Here is his little cambric frock 

That I laid by in lavender so sweet, 

And here his tiny shoe and sock 

I made with loving care for his dear feet, 

I fold the frock across my breast, 

And in imagination, ah, my sweet, 

Once more I hush my babe to rest, 

And once again I warm those little feet. 



246 



WOMEN AND THE WAR 



Where do those strong young feet now stand? 

In flooded trench, half numb to cold or pain, 
Or marching through the desert sand 

To some dread place that they may never gam« 

God guide him and his men to-day! 

Though death may lurk in any tree or hill, 
His brave young spirit is their stay, 

Trusting in that they '11 follow where he will. 

They love him for his tender heart 

When poverty or sorrow asks his aid, 

But he must see each do his part — 
Of cowardice alone he is afraid. 

I ask no honours on the field, 

That other men have won as brave as he — 
I only pray that God may shield 

My son, and bring him safely back to me! 

Ada Tyrrell 

TO THE OTHERS 

This was the gleam then that lured from far 

Your son and my son to the Holy War: 

Your son and my son for the accolade 

With the banner of Christ over them, in steel arrayed 

All quiet roads of life ran on to this; 

When they were little for their mother's kiss. 

Little feet hastening, so soft, unworn, 

To the vows and the vigil and the road of thorn. 



THE JOURNEY 



247 



Your son and my son, the downy things, 
Sheltered in mother's breast, by mother's wings, 
Should they be broken in the Lord's wars — Peace! 
He Who has given them — are they not His ? 

Dream of knight's armour and the battle-shout, 
Fighting and falling at the last redoubt, 
Dream of long dying on the field of slain; 
This was the dream that lured, nor lured in vain. 

These were the Voices they heard from far; 
Bugles and trumpets of the Holy War. 
Your son and my son have heard the call, 
Your son and my son have stormed the wall. 

Your son and my son, clean as new swords; 
Your man and my man and now the Lord's! 
Your son and my son for the Great Crusade, 
With the banner of Christ over them — our knights 
new-made. 

Katharine Tynan 

THE JOURNEY 

I went upon a journey 
To countries far away, 
From province unto province 
To pass my holiday. 

And when I came to Serbia, 

In a quiet little town 

At an inn with a flower-filled garden 

With a soldier I sat down. 



248 WOMEN AND THE WAR 



Now he lies dead at Belgrade. 
You heard the cannon roar! 
It boomed from Rome to Stockholm, 
It pealed to the far west shore. 

And when I came to Russia, 

A man with flowing hair 

Called me his friend and showed me 

A flowing river there. 

Now he lies dead at Lemberg, 
Beside another stream, 
In his dark eyes extinguished 
The friendship of his dream. 

And then I crossed two countries 
Whose names on my lips are sealed . . . 
Not yet had they flung their challenge 
Nor led upon the field 

Sons who lie dead at Liege, 
Dead by the Russian lance, 
Dead in southern mountains, 
Dead through the farms of France. 

I stopped in the land of Louvain, 
So tranquil, happy, then. 
I lived with a good old woman, 
With her sons and her grandchildren. 

Now they lie dead at Louvain, 
Those simple kindly folk. 
Some heard, some fled. It must be 
Some slept, for they never woke. 



A MOTHER'S DEDICATION 249 



I came to France. I was thirsty. 

I sat me down to dine. 

The host and his young wife served me 

With bread and fruit and wine. 

Now he lies dead at Cambrai — « 
He was sent among the first. 
In dreams she sees him dying 
Of wounds, of heat, of thirst. 

At last I passed to Dover 
And saw upon the shore 
A tall young English captain 
And soldiers, many more. 

Now they lie dead at Dixmude, 
The brave, the strong, the young! 
I turn unto my homeland, 
All my journey sung ! 

Grace Fallow Norton 



A MOTHER'S DEDICATION 

Dear son of mine, the baby days are over, 
I can no longer shield you from the earth; 
Yet in my heart always I must remember 
How through the dark I fought to give you birth. 

Dear son of mine, by all the lives behind you; 

By all our fathers fought for in the past; 

In this great war to which your birth has brought you, 

Acquit you well, hold you our honour fast! 



250 WOMEN AND THE WAR 



God guard you, son of mine, where'er you wander; 
God lead the banners under which you fight; 
You are my all, I give you to the Nation, 
God shall uphold you that you fight aright. 

Margaret Peterson 

TO A MOTHER 

Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland — 
Two hearts in one and one among the dead, 
Before your grave with an uncovered head 

I, that am man, disquiet and silent stand 

In reverence. It is your blood they shed; 
It is your sacred self that they demand, 
For one you bore in joy and hope, and planned 

Would make yourself eternal, now has fled. 

But though you yielded him unto the knife 

And altar with a royal sacrifice 
Of your most precious self and dearer life — 

Your master gem and pearl above all price — 
Content you; for the dawn this night restores 
Shall be the dayspring of his soul and yours. 

Eden Phillpotts 

SPRING IN WAR-TIME 

I feel the spring far off, far off, 

The faint, far scent of bud and leaf — 

Oh, how can spring take heart to come 
To a world in grief, 
Deep grief? 



SPRING IN WAR-TIME 251 



The sun turns north, the days grow long, 
Later the evening star grows bright — 

How can the daylight linger on 
For men to fight, 
Still fight? 

The grass is waking in the ground, 

Soon it will rise and blow in waves — 

How can it have the heart to sw^ay 
Over the graves, 
New graves? 

Under the boughs where lovers walked 

The apple-blooms will shed their breath — 

But what of all the lovers now 
Parted by Death, 
Grey Death? 

Sara Teasdale 



OCCASIONAL NOTES 



OCCASIONAL NOTES 



Asquith, Herbert. He received a commission in the 
Royal Marine Artillery at the end of 1914 and served as a 
Second Lieutenant with an Anti-Aircraft Battery in April, 
1915, returning wounded during the following June. He be- 
came a full Lieutenant in July, but was invalided home after 
about six weeks. In June, 1916, he joined the Royal Field 
Artillery and went out to France once again with a battery 
of field guns at the beginning of March, 1917. Since that 
time he has been steadily on active service. 

Bewsher, Paul. He was educated at St. Paul's School, 
and is a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service. 

Blnyon, Laurence. His war writings include The Win- 
nowing Fan and The Anvil, published in America under the 
title of The Cause. 

Bridges, Robert. He has been Poet-Laureate of Eng- 
land since 1913. 

Brooke, Rupert. He was born at Rugby on August 3, 
1887, and became a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 
1913. He was made a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval 
Volunteer Reserve in September, 1914; accompanied the 
Antwerp expedition in October of the same year; and sailed 
with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 
February 28, 1915. He died in the iEgean, on April 23, of acute 
blood-poisoning, and lies buried in the island of Skyros. See 
the memorial poems in this volume, The Island of Skyros, by 
John Maseneld; and Rupert Brooke, by Moray Dalton. His 
war poetry appears in the volume entitled 19 lit, and Oilier 
Poems, and in his Collected Poems. 

Campbell, Wilfred. This well-known Canadian poet has 
lately published Sagas of Vaster Britain, War Lyrics, and 
Canada's Responsibility to the Empire. He died in 1918. His 
son, Captain Basil Campbell, joined the Second Pioneers. 

Chesterton, Cecil Edward. He has been editor of the 
New Witness since 1912, and is a private in the Highland 
Light Infantry. His war writings include The Prussian hath 
said in his Heart, and The Perils of Peace. 



256 



OCCASIONAL NOTES 



Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. This brilliant and versatile 
author has written many essays on phases of the war, includ- 
ing weekly contributions to The Illustrated London News. 

Cone, Helen Gray. She has been Professor of English 
in Hunter College since 1899. Her war poetry appears in the 
volume entitled A Chant of Love for England, and other 
Poems. 

Coulson, Leslie. He was a Fleet Street journalist when 
the war broke out. He joined the British Army in Septem- 
ber, 1914, declined a commission, and served in Egypt, Malta, 
Gallipoli (where he was wounded), and France. He became 
Sergeant in the City of London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) 
and was mortally wounded while leading a charge against the 
Germans October 7, 1916. 

Dlxon, William Macneile. He is a Professor of English 
Language and Literature in the University of Glasgow. His 
war writings include The British Navy at War and The Fleets 
behind the Fleet. 

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. He has written A History of 
the Great War. 

Field, A. N. He is a private in the Second New Zealand 
Brigade. 

Frankau Gilbert. Upon the declaration of war he joined 
the Ninth East Surrey Regiment (Infantry), with the rank of 
Lieutenant. He was transferred to the Royal Field Artillery 
in March, 1915, and was appointed Adjutant during the fol- 
lowing July. He proceeded to France in that capacity, fought 
in the battle of Loos, served at Ypres during the winter of 
1915-16, and thereafter took part in the battle of the Somme. 
In October, 1916, he was recalled to England, was promoted 
to the rank of Staff Captain in the Intelligence Corps, and 
was sent to Italy to engage in special duties. 

Galsworthy, John. Mr. Galsworthy, the well-known 
novelist, poet, and dramatist, served for several months as an 
expert masseur in an English hospital for French soldiers at 
Martouret. 

Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson. His war writings include 
Battle, etc. 

Grenfell, The Hon. Julian, D.S.O. He was a Captain 
in the First Royal Dragoons; was wounded near Ypres on 



OCCASIONAL NOTES 



257 



March 13, 1915; and died at Boulogne on May 26. He was 
the eldest son of Lord Desborough. "Julian set an example 
of light-hearted courage," wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Mach- 
lachan, of the Eighth Service Battalion Rifle Brigade, " which 
is famous all through the Army in France, and has stood out 
even above the most lion-hearted.'* 

Hall, James Norman. He is a member of the American 
Aviation Corps in France, and author of Kitchener's Mob 
and High Adventure, He was captured by the Germans, 
May 7, 1918, after an air battle inside the enemy's lines. 

Hardy, Thomas. He received the Order of Merit in 1910. 

Hemphrey, Malcolm. He is a Lance -Corporal in the 
Army Ordnance Corps, Nairobi, British East Africa. 

Hewlett, Maurice Henry. He has published a group of 
his war poems under the title Sing-Songs of the War. 

Hodgson, William Noel. He was the son of the Bishop 
of Ipswich and Edmundsbury, and was a Lieutenant in the 
Ninth Devon Regiment. His pen-name is " Edward Mel- 
bourne." He won the Military Cross. He was killed during 
the battle of the Somme, in July, 1916. 

Howard, Geoffrey. He is a Lieutenant in the Royal 
Fusiliers. 

Hussey, Dyneley. He is a Lieutenant in the Thirteenth 
Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and has published his 
war poems in a volume entitled Fleur de Lys. 

Hutchinson, Henry William. He was the son of Sir 
Sidney Hutchinson, and was educated at St. Paul's School. 
He was a Second Lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment. He 
was killed while on active service in France, March 13, 1917, 
at the age of nineteen. 

Kaufman, Herbert. He has published The Song of the 
Guns, which was later republished as The Hell-Gate of Sois- 
sons. 

Kipling, Rudyard. Mr. Kipling won the Nobel Prize for 
Literature in 1907. His war writings include The New Annies 
in Training, France at War, and Sea Warfare. 

Knight-Adkin, James. When war was declared he was a 
Master at the Imperial Service College, Windsor, and Lieu- 
tenant in the Officers' Training Corps. He volunteered on the 
first day of the war and was attached to the Fourth Battalion, 
Royal Gloucester Regiment. He went into the trenches in 



258 OCCASIONAL NOTES 



March, 1915, was wounded in June, and was invalided home. 
In 1916 he returned to France, and is now a Captain in charge 
of a prisoner-of-war camp. 

Lee, Joseph. He enlisted, at the outbreak of the war, as a 
private in the 1st/ 4th Battalion of the Black Watch, Royal 
Highlanders, in which corps he has served on all parts of the 
British front in France and Flanders. Sergeant Lee has both 
composed and illustrated a volume of war-poems entitled 
Ballads of Battle. 

Lucas, Edward Verrall. Mr. Lucas has undertaken 
hospital service. 

Masefield, John. Mr. Masefield, whose lectures in 
America early in 1916 quickened interest in his work and 
personality, has been very active during the war. He has 
written an excellent study of the campaign on the Gallipoli 
Peninsula, having served there and also in France in connec- 
tion with Red Cross work. 

Morgan, Charles Langbridge. In August, 1914, he re- 
ceived a volunteer commission in the Royal Naval Division, 
and he served at Antwerp in October, afterward becoming 
a Prisoner of War in Holland. 

Newbolt, Sir Henry. He is the author of The Boole of the 
Thin Red Line, Story of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire 
Light Infantry, and Stories of the Great War. 

Noyes, Alfred. His war writings include A Salute to the 
Fleet, etc. 

Ogilvie, William Henry. He was Professor of Agricul- 
tural Journalism in the Iowa State College, U.S.A., from 
1905 to 1907. His war writings include Australia and Other 
Verses. 

Oswald, Sydney. He is a Major in the King's Royal Rifle 
Corps. 

Phillips, Stephen. His war writings include Armageddon, 
etc. He died December 9, 1915. 

Phillpotts, Eden. Among his war writings are The Hu- 
man Boy and the War, and Plain Song, 191^-16. 

Ratcliffe, A. Victor. He was a Lieutenant in the 10 th/ 
13th West Yorkshire Regiment, and was killed in action on 
July 1, 1916. 

Rawnsley, Rev. Hardwicke Drummond. He has been 
Canon of Carlisle and Honorary Chaplain to the King since 
1912. 



OCCASIONAL NOTES 



259 



Robertson, Alexander. He is a Corporal in the Twelfth 
York and Lancaster Regiment. He was reported " missing " 
in July, 1916. 

Ross, Sir Ronald. He is the President of the Poetry So- 
ciety of Great Britain, and is a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 
Royal Army Medical Corps. 

Scollard, Clinton. His war writings include The Vale of 
Shadows, and Other Verses of the Great War, and Italy in 
Arms, and Other Verses. 

Scott, Canon Frederick George. He is a Major in the A 
Third Brigade of the First Canadian Division, British Ex- 
peditionary Force. 

Seaman, Sir Owen. He has been the editor of Punch since 
190G. His war writings include War -Time and Made in 
England. 

Seeger, Alan. Among the Americans who have served at 
the front there is none who has produced poetic work of such 
high quality as that of Alan Seeger. He was born in New 
York on June 22nd, 1888; was educated at the Horace Mann 
School; Hackley School, Tarry town, New York; and Har- 
vard College. In 1912 he went to Paris and lived the life of a 
student and writer in the Latin Quarter. During the third 
week of the war he enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France. 
His service as a soldier was steady, loyal and uncomplaining 
— indeed, exultant would not be too strong a word to describe 
the spirit which seems constantly to have animated his mili- 
tary career. He took part in the battle of Champagne. After- 
wards, his regiment was allowed to recuperate until May, 
1916. On July 1 a general advance was ordered, and on the 
evening of July 4 the Legion was ordered to attack the villa ge 
of Belloy-en-Santerre. Seeger's squad was caught by the fire 
of six machine-guns and he himself was wounded in several 
places, but he continued to cheer his comrades as they rushed 
on in what proved a successful charge. He died on the morn- 
ing of July 5. The twenty or more poems he wrote during 
active service are included in the collected Poems by Alan 
Seeger, with an Introduction by William Archer. 

Sorley, Charles Hamilton. He was born at Old Aber- 
deen on May 19, 1895. He was a student at Marlborough 
College from the autumn of 1908 until the end of 1913, at 
which time he was elected to a scholarship at University 



260 OCCASIONAL NOTES 



College, Oxford. After leaving school in England, he spent 
several months as a student and observer in Germany. 
When the war broke out he returned home and was 
gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Seventh (Service) Bat- 
talion of the Suffolk Regiment. In November he was 
made a Lieutenant, and in August, 1915, a Captain. He 
served in France from May 30 to October 13, 1915, when he 
was killed in action near Hulluch. His war poems and letters 
appear in a volume entitled Marlborough and other Poems, 
published by the Cambridge University Press. 

Stewart, J. E. He was a Captain in the Eighth Border 
Regiment, British Expeditionary Force. He was awarded 
the Military Cross in 1916. He was killed in April, 1917, dur- 
ing a victorious advance up the Messines Road. 

Tennant, Edward Wyndham. He was the son of Baron 
Glenconner, and was at Winchester when war was declared. 
He was only seventeen when he joined the Grenadier Guards, 
Twenty-first Battalion. He had one year's training in Eng- 
land, saw one year's active service in France, and fell, gal- 
lantly fighting, in the battle of the Somme, 191 G. 

Tynan, Katharine. Pen-name of Mrs. Katharine Tynan 
Hinkson, whose war writings include The Flower of Peace, 
The Holy War, etc. 

Van Dyke, Henry. He has been Professor of English 
Literature in Princeton University since 1909, and was 
United States Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg 
from June, 1913, to December, 1916. He has published sev- 
eral war poems. He is the first American to receive an hon- 
orary degree at Oxford since the United States entered the 
war. The degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred upon 
him on May 8, 1917. 

Vernede, Robert Ernest. He was educated at St. Paul's 
School and at St. John's College, Oxford. On leaving college 
he became a professional writer, producing several novels and 
two books of travel sketches, one dealing with India, the 
other with Canada. He was also author of a number of 
poems. At the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the Nine- 
teenth Royal Fusiliers, known as the Public Schools Battal- 
ion, and received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the 
Rifle Brigade, in May, 1915. He went to France in Novem- 
ber, 1915, and was wounded during the battle of the Somme 
in September of the following year, but returned to the front 



OCCASIONAL NOTES 261 



in December. He died of wounds on April 9, 1917, in his 
forty-second year. 

Waterhouse, Gilbert. Lieutenant in the Second Essex 
Regiment. His war writings include Railhead, and other 
Poems. He was reported "missing," July 1, 1916. 

Wharton, Edith. She has written Fighting France, etc. 



INDEXES 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



A bowl of daffodils 182 

A league and a league from the trenches — from the 

traversed maze of the lines 162 

A song of hate is a song of Hell 12 

A sudden swirl of song in the bright sky 25 

A wind 'u the world! The dark departs 53. 

A winged death has smitten dumb thy bells 146 

All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England 166 

All the hills and vales along 157 

Alone amid the battle-din untouched 179 

Ambassador of Christ you go 188 

Around no fire the soldiers sleep to-night 180 

As I lay in the trenches 132 

As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse 96 

At last there '11 dawn the last of the long year 179 

Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine 95 

Because for once the sword broke in her hand 29 

Before I knew, the Dawn was on the road 112 

Beneath fair Magdalen's storied towers 91 

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead 223 

Broken, bewildered by the long retreat 145 

Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began 5 

Burned from the ore's rejected dross 109 

By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done 65 

By all the glories of the day 178 

By day, by night, along the lines their dull boom rings 174 

Champion of human honour, let us lave 47 

Come, Death, I 'd have a word with thee 110 

Courage came to you with your boyhood's grace 205 

Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west 195 

Dawn off the Foreland — the young flood making 196 

Dear son of mine, the baby days are over 249 

Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town 130 



266 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Endless lanes sunken in the clay 170 

England, in this great fight to which you go 24 

England! where the sacred flame 21 

Facing the guns, he jokes as well 131 

Far fall the day when England's realm shall see 95 

For all we have and are 22 

Franceline rose in the dawning gray 31 

From morn to midnight, all day through 152 

Further and further we leave the scene 108 

Give us a name to fill the mind 30 

Great names of thy great captains gone before 69 

Green gardens in Laventie ! 146 

Guns of Verdun point to Metz 85 

He said: Thou petty people, let me pass 77 

Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread 96 

Here is his little cambric frock 245 

Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent 153 

Here, where we stood together, we three men 224 

I cannot quite remember . . . There were five 236 

I feel the spring far off, far off 250 

I have a rendezvous with Death 151 

I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke 127 

I know a beach road 174 

I never knew you save as all men know 239 

I pray for peace; yet peace is but a prayer 97 

I saw her first abreast the Boston Light 7 

I saw the spires of Oxford 89 

I see across the chasm of flying years 171 

I was out early to-day, spying about 145 

I went upon a journey 247 

I will die cheering, if I needs must die 61 

If I should die, think only this of me 152 

In a vision of the night I saw them 190 

In lonely watches night by night 230 

In the face of death, they say, he joked — he had no 

fear 237 

In the glad revels, in the happy fetes 160 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 207 

It is portentous, and a thing of state 6 

It was silent in the street 127 

Land of the desolate, Mother of tears = . . . . 47 

Land of the Martyrs — of the martyred dead 54 

Led by Wilhelm, as you tell 119 

Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven -2u2 

Low and brown barns, thatched and repatehed and tat- 
tered 48 

Men of my blood, you English men ! 23 

Men of the Twenty-first 134 

Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim £44 

Mother and child! Though the dividing sea 11 

My leg? It's off at the knee 215 

My name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? Oui, 

Comedie Franqaise 141 

Nay, nay, sweet England, do not grieve. 2-27 

Near where the royal victims fell 3S 

No Man's Land is an eerie sight 158 

No more old England will they see 2-28 

Not long did we lie on the torn, red field of pain 238 

Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's 

prayer 14 

Not with her ruined silver spires 46 

Now is the midnight of the nations: dark 101 

Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine 17 

Now slowly sinks the day-long labouring sun 104 

Now spake the Emperor to all his shining battle forces 77 

gracious ones, we bless your name 1SS 

living pictures of the dead 9S 

O race that Csesar knew , . 45 

Of all my dreams by night and day 59 

Often I think of you, Jimmy Doane 14 

Oh, down by the Millwali Basin as I went the other day 200 

Oh, red is the English rose 240 

Oh! yon hills are filled with sunlight, and the green leaves 

paled to gold 183 

Our little hour, — how swift it flies , 176 



868 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Out where the line of battle cleaves 192 

Over the twilight field 243 

Qui vive? Who passes by up there? 42 

Quiet thou didst stand at thine appointed place 180 

Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland 250 

Saints have adored the lofty soul of you 226 

See you that stretch of shell-torn mud spotted with 

pools of mire 181 

Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight 99 

She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint 

might come 32 

She was binding the wounds of her enemies when they 

came 138 

Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her 144 

Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea 198 

The battery grides and jingles 167 

The falling rain is music overhead. 172 

The first to climb the parapet 155 

The horror-haunted Belgian plains riven by shot and 

shell 121 

The naked earth is warm with Spring 154 

The road that runs up to Messines 172 

The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten 234 

There are five men in the moonlight 83 

There is a hill in England 122 

There is wild water from the north 233 

They had hot scent across the spumy sea 199 

They sent him back to her. The letter came 219 

This is my faith, and my mind's heritage. 97 

This is the ballad of Langemarck 69 

This was the gleam then that lured from far 246 

Those who have stood for thy cause when the dark was 

around thee 37 

Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan 

Bay 4 

Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea 117 

Three hundred thousand men, but not enough 84 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 2G9 



To the Judge of Right and Wrong 3 

'T was in the piping time of peace 115 

Under our curtain of fire 212 

Under the tow-path past the barges 90 

Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee 232 

Was there love once? I have forgotten her 166 

We are here in a wood of little beeches 169 

We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice. . 240 

We may not know how fared your soul before 239 

We willed it not. We have not lived in hate 103 

W r hat have I given 235 

What is the gift we have given thee. Sister? 39 

What of the faith and fire within us 101 

What was it kept you so long, brave German submersi- 
ble? 136 

When battles were fought 118 

When consciousness came back, he found he lay 207 

When first I saw you in the curious street 176 

When the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent. . . 11 

When there is Peace our land no more 116 

Whence not unmoved I see the nations form 98 

Wherever war, with its red woes 1S7 

With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their 

hoofs 73 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children . . . 225 

Ye sleepers, who will sing you 231 

You dare to say with perjured lips 197 

You have become a forge of snow-white fire 35 



INDEX OF TITLES 



(The titles of sections are set in small capitals) 

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight. . . Vachel Lindsay 6 
All the Hills and Vales along . . . Charles Hamilton Sorley 157 



America 1 

America, To Charles Langbridge Morgan 11 

Anvil, The Laurence Binyon 109 

At St. Paul's Hardwicke Drummand Rawnsley 14 

Australia 63 

Australia to England Archibald T. Strong 65 

Auxiliaries 185 



Battle of Liege, The Dana Burnet 77 

Battlefield, The Sydney Oswald 180 

Beach Road by the Wood, The Geoffrey Howard 174 

Before Action . . W. N. Hodgson ("Edward Melbourne ") 178 

Belgians, To the Laurence Binyon 45 

Belgium 43 

Belgium Edith Wharton 4G 

Belgium, To Eden Phillpotts 47 

Belgium in Exile, To Owen Seaman 47 

Between the Lines Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 207 

British Merchant Service C. Fox Smith 290 

Brooke, Rupert Moray Dalton 239 

" — But a Short Time to Live " Leslie Coulson 176 



Canada 67 

Canada to England Marjorie L. C. Pickthall 69 

Canadians Will H. Ogilvie 73 

Casualty Clearing Station, The Gilbert Waterhouse 182 

Cavell, Edith Laurence Binyon 138 

Challenge of the Guns, The A.N. Field 174 

Champagne, 1914-15 Alan Seeger 160 

Chant of Love for England, A Helen Gray Cone 12 

Chaplain to the Forces Winifred M. Letts 188 

Choice, The Rudyard Kipling 3 

Christmas: 1915 Percy MacKaye 101 



272 INDEX OF TITLES 



Courage Dyneley Hussey 179 

Cricketers of Flanders, The James Norman Hall 155 

Cross in Flanders, A G. Rostrevor Hamilton 237 

Dawn Patrol, The Paul Bewsher 198 

Day's March, The Robert Nichols 167 

Dead, The Rupert Brooke 223 

Death of Peace, The Ronald Ross 104 

Debt, The E. V. Lucas 228 

Debt Unpayable, The F. W. Bourdillon 235 

Destroyers off Jutland . . . Reginald Mcintosh Cleveland 199 

England 19 

England and America 9 

England and America Florence T. Holt 11 

England to Free Men John Galsworthy 23 

Expectans Expectavi Charles Hamilton Sorley 152 

Fallen, The 221 

Fallen Subaltern, The Herbert Asquith 234 

Fellow Travellers in Greece, To. . .W . Macneile Dixon 115 

Fleurette Robert W. Service 215 

Fool Rings his Bells, The Walter de la Mare 110 

" For All We Have and Are " Rudyard Kipling 22 

For the Fallen Laurence Binyon 225 

France 27 

France Cecil Chesterton 29 

France, O Glorious Edgar Lee Masters 35 

France, The Name of Henry van Dyke 30 

France, To Herbert Jones 37 

France, To Frederick George Scott 39 

Fulfilment Robert Nichols 166 

German Prisoners Joseph Lee 176 

Guards came through, The Arthur Conan Doyle 134 

Guns of Verdun Patrick R. Chalmers 85 

Harvest Moon Josephine Preston Peabody 243 

Harvest Moon: 1916 Josephine Preston Peabody 244 

Headquarters Gilbert Frankau 162 

Healers, The Laurence Binyon 190 



INDEX OF TITLES 273 



Hell-Gate of Soissons, The Herbert Kaufman 141 

Hero, To a Oscar C. A. Child 239 

Hills of Home Malcolm Hemphrey 183 

Home Thoughts from Laventie. . E. Wyndham Tennant 164 

"How Sleep the Brave " Walter de la Mare 227 

I have a Rendezvous with Death Alan Seeger 151 

In the Trenches Maurice Hewlett 132 

In War-Time Florence Earle Coates 108 

Incidents and Aspects 125 

Into Battle Julian Grenfell 154 

Island of Skyros, The John Masefield 224 

Italian Front, On the George Edward Woodberry 61 

Italy 57 

Italy in Arms Clinton Scollard 59 

Jeanne d' Arc, The Soul of Theodosia Garrison 32 

Jimmy Doane. Rowland. Thirlmere 14 

Journey, The , Grace Fallow Norton 247 

Kaiser and Belgium, The Stephen Phillips 77 

Kaiser and God, The Barry Pain 119 

Keeping the Seas 193 

Kilmeny Alfred Noyes 195 

Kitchener John Helston 233 

Kitchener, Lord Robert Bridges 232 

Langemarck at Ypres Wilfred Campbell 69 

Letter from the Front, A Henry Newbolt 145 

" Liberty Enlightening the World "... Henry van Dyke 4 

Liege 75 

Lines Written in Surrey, 1917. . .George Herbert Clarke 25 

Lord Kitchener Robert Bridges 232 

Mare Liberum Henry van Dyke 197 

Men of Verdun Laurence Binyon 83 

" Men who March away " Thomas Hardy 101 

Messages, The Wilfrid TVilson Gibson 236 

Messines Road, The J.E. Stewart 172 

Mine-Sweepers, The Rudyard Kipling 196 

Mobilization in Brittany, The. . . . Grace Fallow Norton 127 



274 INDEX OF TITLES 



Mother, To a Eden Pkillpotts 250 

Mother's Dedication, A Margaret Peterson 249 

My Son Ada Tyrrell 245 

Name of France, The Henry van Dyke 30 

No Man's Land James H. Knight- Adkin 158 

Not to Keep Robert Frost 219 

O Glorious France Edgar Lee Masters So 

Old Soldier, The Katharine Tynan 232 

" On Les Aura ! " James H. Knight- Adkin 181 

On the Italian Front, MCMXVI 

George Edward Woodberry 61 

Optimism A. Victor Ratclife 179 

Others, To the Katharine Tynan 246 

Our Fallen, To Robert Ernest Vernede 231 

Oxford 87 

Oxford in War-Time TV. Snow 90 

Oxford revisited in War-Time Tertius van Dyke 91 

Passengers of a Retarded Submersible, The 

William Dean Howells 136 

Petition, A Robert Ernest Vernede 166 

Place de la Concorde Florence Earle Coates 38 

Players, The Francis Bickley 240 

Poets Militant 149 

Prayer in Time of War, A Alfred Noyes 117 

Princeton, May, 1917 Alfred Noyes 17 

Pro Patria Owen Seaman 24 

Qui Vive? Grace Ellery Channing 40 

Red Cross, Song of the Eden Phillpotts 189 

Red Cross Nurses, The Thomas L. Masson 192 

Red Cross Spirit Speaks, The John Finley 187 

Reflections 93 

Requiescant Frederick George Scott 230 

Resurrection Hermann Hagedorn 238 

Retreat Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 145 

Return, The John Freeman 127 

Rheims Cathedral — 1914 Grace Hazard Conkling 146 



INDEX OF TITLES 275 







112 






239 






51 


Russia — America 




5f 


Russia New and Free, To 


. Robert Underwood Johnson 


5f 


St. Paul's, At Hardivicke Drummond Rawnsley 


14 






99 


Sign, The 


Frederic Manning 


169 


Soldier, The 


Rupert Brooke 


152 


Soldier in Hospital, To a . 


Winifred M. Letts 


205 


Song, A 


Charles Alexander Richmond 


2-10 


Song of the Red Cross . . . 


Eden Phillpotts 


189 


Sonnets 


.Henry William Hutchinson 


171 


Sonnets, Two 




226 


Sonnets written in the Fall of 1914 






George Edward Woodberry 


95 


Soul of Jeanne d'Arc, The 




32 




Winifred M. Letts 


89 






250 






121 






118 




131 


Three Hills 




122 




Oscar C. A. Child 


239 


To a Mother 




250 


To a Soldier in Hospital . 


Winifred M. Letts 


205 




. Charles Langbridge Morgan 


11 


To an Old Lady seen at a Guest-House for Soldiers 






Alexander Robertson 


182 




Eden Phillpotts 


47 






47 


To Fellow Travellers in Greece. . . .W. Macneile Dixon 


115 






37 






39 


To Our Fallen 


Robert Ernest Vernede 


231 


To Russia New and Free . 


.Robert Underwood Johnson 


54 






45 


To the Others 




246 




5 



276 INDEX OF TITLES 



Toy Band, The 




130 


Trenches, The 




170 






226 


United States of America, To the Robert Bridges 


5 






81 




h nom Hhall snnH o 


84 


Vifril Thf> 


rt pwrii /V 01 i^nrti f 


21 


ViTcrin rkf AHifrt Trip 


f i orwno / / ot npyf ( t /~i r l." o 


144 




( 1 1 f l }* 1 / \~f f 1 1 r\l YYl o ( <v /in mtVw ri 

, . L/ llUrKJlio LluLliLtb l^TClWjOTll 


31 


Volunteer, The 




153 


War Films, The 




98 


We Willed it not 




103 


" When there is Peace 99 . . . 




116 


White Comrade, The , , , 




212 


Wife of Flanders, The , 




48 


"William P. Frye," The, 


Jeanne Robert Foster 


7 


Women and the War , 




241 






203 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Asquith, Herbert 153, 234 

Bewsher, Paul 198 

Bickley, Francis 240 

Binyon, Laurence 45, 83, 109, 138, 190, 225 

Bourdillon, F. W 235 

Bridges, Robert 5,232 

Brooke, Rupert 152, 223 

Burnet, Dana 77 

Campbell, Wilfred 69 

Chalmers, Patrick R 85 

Channing, Grace Ellery 40 

Chesterton, Cecil 29 

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 48 

Child, Oscar C. A 239 

Clarke, George Herbert 25,144 

Cleveland, Reginald McIntosh 199 

Coates, Florence Earle. 38,108 

Cone, Helen Gray 12 

Conkllng, Grace Hazard 146 

Coulson, Leslie 176 

Crawford, Charlotte Holmes 31 

D alton, Moray 239 

De la Mare, Walter 110, 227 

Dixon, W. Macneile 115 

Dobson, Austin 116 

Doyle, Arthur Conan 134 

Drinkwater, John 103 

Field, A. N 174 

Finley, John 112, 187 

Foster, Jeanne Robert 7 

Frankau, Gilbert 162 



278 INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Freeman, John 127 

Frost, Robert 219 

Galsworthy, John 23,53 

Garrison, Theodosia 32 

Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson 145,207,236 

Grant, Robert 121 

Grenfell, Julian 154 

Hagedorn, Hermann 238 

Hall, James Norman 155 

Hamilton, G. Rostrevor 237 

Hardy, Thomas 101,118 

Helston, John 233 

Hemphrey, Malcolm 183 

Hewlett, Maurice 132 

Hodgson, William Noel (" Edward Melbourne ") . . 178 

Holt, Florence T 11 

Howard, Geoffrey 174 

Ho wells, William Dean 136 

Hussey, Dyneley 179 

Hutchinson, Henry William 171 

Johnson, Robert Underwood 54 

Jones, Herbert 37 

Kaufman, Herbert 141 

Kipling, Rudyard 3,22,196 

Knight-Adkln, James H 158, 181 

Lee, Joseph 1T6 

Letts, Winifred M 89,188,205 

Lindsay, Vachel 6 

Lucas, E. V 228 

MacKaye, Percy 101 

Manning, Frederic 169, 170 

Masefield, John 224 

Masson, Thomas % L 192 

Masters, Edgar Lee 35 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 279 



•'Melbourne, Edward" (W.N.Hodgson) 178 

Morgan, Charles Langbridge 11 

Newbolt, Henry 21, 98, 130, 145 

Nichols, Robert 166,167 

Norton, Grace Fallow 127,247 

Notes, Alfred 17, 99, 117, 195 

Ogilvie, Will H 73 

Oswald, Sydney 180 

Owen, Everard 122 

Pain, Barry 119 

Peabody, Josephine Preston 243, 244 

Peterson, Margaret 249 

Phillips, Stephen 77 

Phillpotts, Eden 47,84,189,250 

PlCKTHALL, MARJORIE L. C 69 

Ratcliffe, A. Victor 179 

Rawnsley, Hardwicke Drummond 14 

Richmond, Charles Alexander 240 

Robertson, Alexander 182 

Ross, Ronald 104 

SCHAUFFLER, ROBERT HAVEN 212 

Scollard, Clinton 59 

Scott, Frederick George 39, 230 

Seaman, Owen 24, 47, 131 

Seeger, Alan 151, 160 

Service, Robert W 215 

Smith, C. Fox 200 

Snow, W 90 

Sorley, Charles Hamilton 152, 157, 226 

Stewart, J. E 172 

Strong, Archibald T 65 



Teasdale, Sara 

Tennant, E. Wyndham 
Thirlmere, Rowland. . 



250 
164 
14 



280 INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Tynan, Katharine 232,246 

Tyrrell, Ada 245 

Van Dyke, Henry 4, 30, 197 

Van Dyke, Tertius 91 

Vernede, Robert Ernest 166, 231 

Waterhouse, Gilbert 182 

Wharton, Edith 46 

Woodberry, George Edward 61,95 



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